


When in Rhome

by ZuWang



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Case Fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Alteration, Memory Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-07 12:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11623089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZuWang/pseuds/ZuWang
Summary: A god steals some demigods' freedom. The demigods steal Sam's memory. Sam steals Dean's car. Did I miss anything? Oh, yeah. Someone or something is killing people in Rhome Texas, and our favorite brothers have to figure out who or what - and not kill each other in the meantime.





	1. Sam steals a car

**Author's Note:**

> With undying thanks to my wondrous beta and sounding board, JaniceC678. Thank you for being the perfect mix of critical and encouraging. You went beyond beta, and I truly appreciate it.
> 
> To readers afraid to start WIPs: This fic is entirely written, start to finish. I will post regularly every few days until it's all online.

Mars watched his son for a short eternity as these things are measured by gods. The boy lay staring toward Earth, unmoving save one foot which tapped with distracting lack of rhythm. The god sighed, perhaps more dramatically than necessary -- he was a god, after all -- and froze his son’s foot with a force of will. Romulus looked up, startled.

“What could you possibly be watching so intensely?” asked the god in the tones of all fathers everywhere.

“This…” Romulus sounded half wistful and half dismissive, “These two humans. Down there.” He gestured.

Mars’ eyes followed the movement. “Oh,” he replied, his cosmic eyes rolling with enough emphasis that the ground rumbled under Los Angeles, “them.” The pair – well known to all gods in all pantheons – was arguing again. Something about another apocalypse. Mars grunted in minor annoyance. The aftershock, again centered in Los Angeles, could be felt all the way to San Francisco. “What about them?”

“Do you think they realize how…” the demigod began.

“Petty?” prompted his father.

“…lucky,” continued Romulus. “Do they realize how lucky they are to have each other?”

Mars sighed. A skirmish in a small, inconsequential village somewhere expanded into full-blown war which threatened the stability of the Philippines. The boy had developed an unnatural affinity for brother pairs ever since he’d killed his own brother a few thousand years before. He seemed to adopt the hardest-luck siblings he could find in any given century as some type of special project. It was annoying, but what could you do about kids’ fancies?

“Maybe I should show them,” suggested the kid in question.

Mars grunted noncommittally. “Whatever. Just make sure you’re at your grandfather’s ceremony by quarter till three thousand.” He moved off, looking for a snack or perhaps a vestal virgin.

ooooOOOOoooo

Sam Winchester woke as the ground beneath him trembled ominously. It reminded him of his days in college, before he’d given up on childhood fancies to join his father in the family business. He groaned and rolled over. It had been a long night. His arms ached from digging and the room smelled of the smoke that had embedded itself into his faded jeans. He’d planned on doing little more than laundry today, and that after a LONG morning’s rest, but if he knew Southern California, aftershocks would soon – the earth rolled and bucked – yeah, very soon, wake him back up anyway. The motel room’s lights flickered and died, as did the room’s ancient heater. _Power’s out; so much for doing laundry_.

Instead, Sam opened his laptop to peruse the candidates he’d been considering for his next case. Somewhere warm, but with solid ground beneath his feet, he decided. _There was something down in Texas._ He flipped to the relevant tab on his browser.

ooooOOOOoooo

The third round of rolling, roiling ground finally shook Dean awake. He noted the sun coming through the room’s windows and squinted toward his brother’s bed. The younger Winchester wasn’t in it. _Probably going for one of his stupid jogs._ Dean’s head dropped back to his pillow with a ‘thump.’

ooooOOOOoooo

An hour later, Sam was bored and ready to move on. He had pulled up all of the information he could find about the case he’d chosen to pursue, the battery on his laptop was about to die, and the temperature in the room was steadily dropping. He may as well be on the road. Sam grabbed what few items he had pulled out over the past week and stuffed them back into his duffel, gave the meager room a last look, and left without a backward glance. In the parking lot, he dropped the duffel beside the rest of his worldly possessions in the back of his old black car. The creak of the driver’s door reminded him, as it always did, of his dad. The Impala had been the old man’s baby, and it was still in good shape despite its age. John Winchester would have haunted Sam if he’d let it deteriorate, so he made sure to keep it in repair even with the often high cost of garage services. It was worth the price. He cranked the heater up to fight off the November chill, plugged his iPod into the jack, and swung the sleek beast out onto the highway, heading toward the small town of Rhome, Texas.

ooooOOOOoooo

Dean startled awake to the sound of Baby’s engine roaring out of the motel parking lot. _Where’s he going?_

He decided it was unimportant and rolled over, pulling his covers up to his chin.

Later, when the sun streaming in the dirty motel windows and the chilly air in the still darkened room would no longer allow him to sleep at all, Dean still found the room Sam-free. He fumbled for his cellphone and hit speed dial 1 even as he pried his eyes open. The device rang twice before it was answered.

“Howdy doody, Dean-o!”

Dean wasn’t quite with it yet. It took a second before he placed the voice. “Garth?”

“Yeah…” he chuckled, “You butt-dial me, man?”

“Um… yeah. Musta…” He looked at his phone with confusion. “Musta misdialed. Sorry.” Pressing the disconnect button, he carefully pressed and held the ‘1’ to redial his brother.

“Howdy doody again, Dean-o!”

What in the hell? “Garth, I’m sorry. I think Sam must have screwed with my speed dial settings. I’ll clock the pain in the ass for you, I promise.”

“Sam?” Garth sounded a bit confused. “You mean Sam Allen? Or,” and the man’s voice turned cocky and teasing in the manner of a 15-year-old making fun of his brother, “did you find a lady named Samantha this time, you old dog?”

“What? Sam Winchester. Why would you…” He stopped, shaking his head in amusement as he realized who he was talking to. Garth was…different. Good guy, but a sandwich short of a picnic. “Never mind. I’ll talk to you later, Garth.”

“OK, man.” There was a pause, and Garth’s voice turned serious on the other end of the phone. He continued, “Listen. I know it’s none of my business, and I don’t know what kinda baddie you’re after that you’re hanging out with Sam Winchester, but just… be careful, OK? You know what they say about that guy. I mean, I know he’s good. EVERYONE knows he’s good, but…” another pause, “just… be careful, OK?” Dean heard a ringing on the other end of the line. “Damn. Sorry Dean-o. Gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.” And before Dean could wrap his head around what had just been said, the line went dead.

ooooOOOOoooo

Tricia Yearwood’s voice rose above the rumbling of the Impala’s engine as Sam made his way swiftly south and east. The roads out here were well maintained and basically empty, just the way Sam liked it. The drive would be plenty long enough for Sam to work the stiffness out of his arms. Despite more than twenty years of practice, digging a grave was guaranteed to leave him sore come morning. Three feet down, it always occurred to him that he should find a partner – an apprentice like his dad had in Sam himself – if for no other reason than to do some of the heavy lifting.

His phone rang. He hit pause on the iPod and tapped the answer button on his phone. “hello?”

“Sam! Where the hell are you?”

Sam didn’t recognize the voice, but that didn’t mean much. In his line of work, he met a lot of people who tended to remember him better than he remembered them. “California. Who’s this?”

“California?” The voice sounded frustrated. “I know you’re in freaking California. You left the motel like three hours ago. Where are you? And when did you change your number? I had to ask Garth for it.”

Sam was fully on alert. This person, whoever it was, was watching him. Sam thought he’d heard the voice before but couldn’t place it. The guy knew Garth, which made him a hunter. Sam reached toward the glove compartment, flipping a switch to scramble his cell signal, routing his call through towers all over the southwest before it bounced to wherever this hunter was. No way for the other guy to get a fix on his location from his phone now. “You looking for me for a reason?”

“What?” came the voice, sounding confused and annoyed.

Again the sound tickled the back of Sam’s mind. _The roadhouse maybe?_ That didn’t help much. A lot of hunters went through that place, and too many of them knew about Sam. Way too many.

Back at the motel, Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off the migraine which only formed when Sam was being especially obtuse. “Sam, come on. Of course I’m looking for you. If this is about that thing last night…” It couldn’t have been. They’d fought over more important things a thousand times with never a word said the next day. Sam wouldn’t have taken off – sure as hell wouldn’t have taken Baby – over the little spat the night before. “Whatever, Sam. Just, bring back the car without a scratch or I’m gonna take it out of your hide. And bring breakfast. Pancakes. I’m taking a shower. See you later.”

The line broke off. _See you later._ Was that a threat? Did the guy know where he was? Should he go back to the motel, see what he could find? _No. If the guy knew where Sam was, he’d be less likely to find Sam if he kept on toward Texas. If he didn’t already know, going back would only give him information that the guy didn’t have right now._ Sam would keep going, but he’d keep an eye out for a possible ambush along the way. For now? The guy had said he’d gotten Sam’s number from Garth. Sam hit ‘6’ on his speed dial.

oooOOOooo

Fifteen minutes later, after a shower long enough to use up every bit of hot water available, Dean found a missed call on his phone. He checked the number, rolled his eyes, and dialed. “Hey, Garth.”

“Um… hey, man.” Garth sounded wrong. That serious voice was back. “How you doing, my friend?”

“Garth, we just talked.”

“Yeah. Um… Did you…call…Sam Winchester?”

“You know I did. I asked you for his number.” And why he’d had to call _Garth_ of all people for that number he’d never know.

“Yeah. And then he called me.” Garth felt out of his depth. Dean Wynt was a sarcastic SOB, but he’d always been reliably straightforward. He cleared his throat and started again, “Sam said you threatened him?”

“What?” Dean’s voice rose instinctively, well before his brain could process such a statement. “Threatened Sam? I’d never… OK, so we had some words last night, but you know me, Garth. I would never threaten my brother. I just told him to bring back my car and some pancakes.” What the hell would he even threaten Sam about? OK, so he took Baby…

“You have a brother? Man, see? I’m learning more about you --” Garth started, and then paused. “Wait. Sam Winchester stole your car?”

There was a moment of silence as Dean sat dumbfounded. _What the fuck?_ “Garth,” Dean took a breath. “Sam -- Sam is my brother.”

“WHAT? REALLY?”

“What do you mean, really? Really. You know that... Wait,” Garth had sounded truly confused. “You don’t know that.” He was silent for a full minute as he thought this through. “Garth. What kind of thing could make someone forget someone’s someone’s brother?”

“Forget someone’s someone’s brother? Is that a riddle?”

“GARTH. Focus.”

“Riiight. OK. So. Forget someone’s someone’s brother.” The silence stretched again as Garth struggled to answer, not because he didn’t know of any supernatural entities which could make somebody forget a family member, but because he knew of so many. “How ‘bout I email you a list?”


	2. Rhoming

Romulus watched the human, Sam, drive through the wide, almost empty plains of Texas. The spot Sam was headed toward – he’d nudged Sam that direction using an almost inconsequential force of godly will – would put the brothers into contact with one of Romulus’ favorite projects-of-old. Between those old friends and the plans Romulus had already put in motion…

The demigod chuckled, waiting for the show to really begin.

oooOOOooo

For generations, Rhome, Texas, had been little more than a crossroad and travel stop off of US Route 287, but its quaint old-timey atmosphere and an easy 30-minute commute time to Fort Worth meant it was growing fast. New construction had been swiftly digging into previously empty prairie land, and, as the building boom really got hopping, rumors began spreading. Disappearances had been followed by a string of unsolved murders, which at first were laid at the feet of the “drifters and reprobates” who frequented the town’s highway-side watering holes, and later attributed to the more and more frequently arriving city-folk neighbors who could (of course) never be trusted.

Into this insular, distrusting environment rolled Sam Winchester – noticeably huge, noticeably new, and above all noticeably _noticeable_. It was a wonder that no one decked him the instant he arrived. Add all of that to the fact that some hunter was trying to track him down, and Sam opted to stay a bit more under the radar than usual. He checked into one of the more expensive motels available to him. Luckily, “more expensive” in Rhome, Texas, was still pretty cheap; and if push came to shove, Sam wouldn’t exactly have to pay the bill. The young woman who checked him in had long black hair and a petite figure. Sam smiled his best dimples and leaned against the counter. “So,” he drawled, putting a bit of Texas into his voice, “anything to do around here while I’m staying?”

She laughed. The sound encouraged his smile into sincerity. “Well, that depends,” she smiled. “How long do you intend to stay?”

“Long enough.” He decided to take advantage of her friendly nature to push his luck, getting an early start on his investigation. “Honestly? I’ve just started a job over in the city, and I’ve got to find a place to live that doesn’t have concrete all around it. You have any suggestions for a neighborhood I should be looking at?”

The woman’s smile vanished and her manner turned cold and professional as she responded, “There’s a lot of new neighborhoods goin’ up around here. You can see them online. Easy to look up. Will that be a single or a double room?”

Sam blinked at the change. “Um, a double,” he said without thinking. _And why did that feel so normal? Oh, well, more room to stretch out, I guess._ He didn’t want to backtrack now. He wanted to leave a pleasant impression with the desk clerk. Sam ducked his head a bit to catch her eyes, and ‘nudged’ her a bit. “Are you okay? Is it something I said?”

She avoided his look, ducking under the counter to pull out a key card and some papers before continuing politely, “Yeah. I’m sorry. No.” Visibly gathering herself together, she finally looked at him. Warmth grudgingly returned to her demeanor and she continued with a forced smile, “Some of the places they’re building on the east end of town are nice. Safe neighborhoods, nice neighbors. You should take a look at those.”

“East end. Got it.” Sam took the key card from her and accepted her directions toward a room on the third floor, thinking w _est end. Got it._

oooOOOooo

The list Garth sent Dean would have been hilariously long had Dean been in any mood for hilarity. The rundown of entities known to be able to wipe minds of familial bonds covered jinn, angels, voodoo priests, witches (Dean nixed that immediately – no hex bags), several creatures Dean had never even heard of, and a truly disturbing number of gods and demigods.

Dean ignored the note affixed to the email asking if Dean was sure – really sure – that Sam was the victim of the mind wipe rather than Dean. There was little in Dean’s life he was more certain of than his brother. Unfortunately, sorting through this pile of possibilities to find out _why_ Sam had apparently forgotten him would have to wait. Figuring out where he’d gone was first on the agenda. Once he’d found his brother, they’d solve the mystery of the mind wipe together, like they always did.

Dean sifted through the case folders Sam had shown him the night before as they’d discussed where they’d be headed next. The apparent poltergeist in New Jersey was discarded immediately – Sam hated New Jersey – as was the simple haunting in Albuquerque. Neither of them was ever particularly interested in a minor, somewhat annoying spirit, preferring to leave such rudimentary cases to less experienced hunters unless they were looking for a vacation. That left two possibilities; a spate of deaths which looked wendigo-ish in Idaho or a bunch of disappearances and deaths in central Texas for which neither brother had formed a theory as yet. He looked through the folders carefully, trying to spot anything which would have caught Sam’s attention. The Idaho case had recently been in an uptick, probably because the cold November weather had chased off the camping crowd and brought whatever had been hunting in the woods down into the local farms and town. Sam’s meticulously researched table showed a building number of victims. He put that file aside and opened the Texas case folder, finding a map printout inside covered in Sam’s cramped writing where strange happenings had… well… where the happenings had happened. Wait… he looked closely at the location of the incidents, comparing it to the list he’d gotten from Garth.

“Fuck. Hold on Sammy. I’m coming.”

He packed up and left the motel room in record time. To his surprise, he didn’t even have to steal a car to leave. A set of keys he’d found on the motel table opened the door of a vehicle just outside, inside of which he found a familiar green cooler. The car’s plates were from Kansas, and a check in the glove compartment found registration in the name of Dean Walsh, an old alias but absolutely one of his. _What the fuck? Fuck it. I need to get to Texas._

The car didn’t even suck. Within thirty minutes of making his decision to head south, Dean was on the road in a gleaming black Dodge Charger, Metallica blaring. The digital clock in the dashboard over the CD player read 2:23PM.

He arrived in Rhome the next morning with the light from the rising sun glaring into his eyes. The bright light did not help allay the headache he was already trying to push away and which only strengthened when he discovered that no one had checked into the Charo Motel under the name Rockford. Sammy either didn’t remember that bit of family code or was intentionally hiding from him. It took Dean three tries until he found a desk clerk at a midline hotel who remembered a very tall man with floppy hair. She wouldn’t give Dean Sam’s room number, but she smiled shyly as she let Dean call his brother on the front desk telephone. No one answered, and the Impala wasn’t in the parking lot. Dean checked himself into a room and sat by the window to wait and read the lore about a local pair of demigod brothers Garth had listed in his “forget somebody” email.

oooOOOooo

The first assumed victims of whatever was going on had disappeared without trace at a quarry a couple of miles west of Rhome proper. Long since flooded, the quarry was still used to a small degree, though where it had once produced high quality granite, it had long since been given over to mining rough gravel used in the making of concrete. The northern half of the pit was abandoned, forming little more than a steep-walled scar behind a chain-link fence off a dirt road. The bottom of the pit was flooded to form a small lake filled with brackish green water, with banks semi-hidden from prying eyes by the quarry’s high, carved granite walls and a few scrubby trees. It had, naturally, become an irresistible hangout for the local teenaged population who built small campfires, smoked, and dabbled in methamphetamines on its makeshift ‘beaches’ and made out in their cars nearby. Three of those teenagers had been reported missing, suspected drowned, in the past two months. Their bodies had not been recovered despite local rescue teams’ repeated searches using scuba equipment and one odiferous attempt at dredging the water.

The Impala’s engine rumbled to a stop near the flooded pit, and Sam got out to walk the last hundred meters or so to the quarry, ducking under the fence with ease and avoiding the single dusty minivan parked off of a dirt track. Sam made his way carefully over the lip of the quarry and followed tracks down the steep walls toward the lakeside. Small stones crunched under his feet, sliding and tumbling toward the water.

Overlooking the pit, Sam found it hard to see how anyone could drown here. No doubt the pool was deep – quarries were, by definition – but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred meters across at its widest, and the water was still, its surface barely ruffled even by the prairie winds, protected as it was by high walls. Moreover, he thought, quarry water is cold, this quarry stank, and, even in Texas, it wasn’t exactly swimming weather in October and November. Why had anyone been in that fetid pool to begin with?

When he reached the water’s edge, Sam followed the shoreline along well-worn footpaths littered with cigarettes and a few used condoms. Low laughter alerted him to the presence of other visitors ahead well before he saw them. He approached slowly, listening as two voices bantered back and forth without letting them know he was there.

“No! I swear. I do it all the time!” came a wheedling and cajoling male voice.

“No. Eww. No. I’m not getting in that. It’s rusty and gross. And besides, the lake smells!” responded his young female companion.

There was a scraping sound, further attempted convincing by the boy, and the sound of stomping feet as the girl began to walk away. The boy half shouted and half laughed, “Okay, okay! We’ll just…” the voices slowly faded as the boy’s footsteps caught up with the girl’s and they continued south along the shoreline, away from Sam.

Once the pair was out of sight, Sam moved to where they had been arguing. A flat-bottomed, rusty metal rowboat was wedged against the gravel shoreline there, half hidden in weeds. Sam shifted it, hearing the scraping sound from earlier, and noted the well-trampled earth around him. _So, this is a popular spot._ Likely, the rowboat was brought by the boy, or someone very like him, to create a “romantic” setting for clumsy, teenaged overtures of lust. He explored the area a bit more, finding little of interest and nothing which surprised him, before continuing further down the shoreline.

He never saw the two boys – identical twins dressed in animal skins - who silently watched him, their long braided hair blowing fitfully in the breeze by the rim of the quarry.

oooOOOooo

As the day marched on, Dean’s anxiety grew. Was he in the right town? Should he have headed to Idaho? Or, and here he shuddered, to New Jersey? He took the rather well-appointed elevator to the lobby, confirming with a young Native American man behind the desk that he’d seen an enormous moose with floppy hair flirting unsuccessfully with his co-worker the night before. The man looked resentful, but he confirmed Sam’s identity when shown a photo.

Toward noon, Dean ordered a pizza delivered, not wanting to risk missing Sam if he arrived while Dean went out to find food. He ate it in the lobby of the hotel. Another desk clerk, this one a cute female with beautiful brown eyes watched Dean as he ate with a mixture of appreciation and confusion, but let him stay where he was. After Dean finished the pizza, he sauntered toward the front desk and turned on the charm. With little else to do, he began to work the case he knew Sam must be investigating…and to do a bit of flirting of his own. If Sam had struck out with this clerk, maybe she was looking for a more experienced older brother. Dean wouldn’t object too strongly.

He managed two questions – had she seen the tall man and had she heard of anything going on that was weird – before the young woman shut down his line of questioning saying, “I’ve got to get back to work,” and heading toward a back room, leaving Dean staring at her colleague who was even less amenable to Dean’s charms than he’d been earlier.

oooOOOooo

Sam’s next stop was the county morgue. The coroner was packing up to go to lunch when he arrived, but was not particularly bothered by the idea of an FBI agent looking through his files while he was gone. It was a waste of time – each of the three cases the man had asked about was a snakebite victim – but if the fed wanted to waste a lunch hour, it was no concern of his. He left Sam in the outer office with his files and some coffee and headed out into a cool, dry Texas afternoon.

Sam read the files and examined the one body still in residence at the morgue, allowing experience and an eye for the weird to consider the evidence. Each of the three victims had been impressively covered with snakebites from the hips down, almost as if they’d been chewed rather than receiving a series of single bites, or as if they’d waded knee-deep in a movie-style viper pit. The problem with that theory, though, was that American pit vipers don’t really _do_ the whole viper pit thing. Sure, a rattlesnake will hibernate with a couple of its friends in the winter, but the condition of these bodies implied dozens of animals were involved. Another problem was the victims’ belongings. None of the three hikers who’d been bitten had been wearing what Sam would call ‘hiking clothes’. The latest had been in a _business suit_ for Chuck’s sake. Sam left the morgue, ready to speak with the victims’ families but without any more idea of what he was seeking than when he’d arrived.

oooOOOooo

Sam left victim number four’s house as the sun began to set, reviewing in his mind the totality of what he’d learned that day. _To sum it up? Squat_. Maybe there was a case in Rhome – _OK_ , he thought, _there likely was a case here_ – but Sam would be damned (again) if he knew what that case might be. Drownings in a lake that shouldn’t be big or interesting enough to drown in, snake bites killing hikers who, according to each of their families, _didn’t hike --_ this was “News of the Weird” stuff, which made it his business. It didn’t add up to any particular _type_ of weird, though. The MO’s were just too different. Maybe it was more than one case? He folded himself into the driver’s seat of the Impala, intending to head back to the hotel, write up his notes, and maybe give Garth a call.

As he reached into the backseat for his journal, the EMF sensor in his duffel spiked with a growling screech. Sam pulled it out, watched the lights dance across its top, and glanced around himself. High power wires crossed the road less than a block away. Sam switched off the high-pitched annoyance, tossed it onto the passenger side of the bench seat, and started the car.

oooOOOooo

Romulus smiled broadly as he watched first one set of brothers and then the other far below him on what was once the unbroken prairie of an untamed land. One pair of boys, with identical features and intricately beaded necklaces, had walked this land when it was unspoiled. He smiled indulgently at that pair as they sat unseen by their living companion in the rear of the black car called “Baby”. The pair looked up, back toward where Romulus was in the sky, as if they could see him through the metal roof, beyond the clouds and ether. Their eyes showed fear and submission, as they ought.

The other pair? Well, the other pair had no idea Romulus existed. At that moment the other pair were seeking one another; and each was well armed and well trained. Romulus rubbed his hands with glee, and thunder rolled across the plains of Texas.

 


	3. Rhome burns

**\- 3 Rhome burns-**

Sam noticed the Charger as soon as he pulled into the hotel lot. He’d seen that car in California, too. The black muscle car with Kansas plates had drawn his eye immediately, as cars always do when you are driving something similar. Sam paused to note the plate number before pulling the Impala around toward the back of the parking area, well away from the familiar vehicle. He checked that his pistol had a full clip before slipping it into his waistband as he stepped out onto the pavement.

oooOOOooo

Dean recognized the sound of his Baby’s engine the instant she turned into the hotel’s parking lot. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as he finally allowed himself to believe that this was the right place; that Sam was really here. He looked out the window, saw the Impala pause momentarily behind the Charger, and watched the antique car roll, growling deeply, toward the back of the building. Leave it to his nerd brother; always observant. The kid knew Dean was here. The older Winchester pulled out the case folder Sam had left behind in California and strode toward his hotel room door. Then, giving it a moment’s thought, he didn’t rush out immediately. That could be Sam down there, but it could also be something that _looked_ like Sam. He reluctantly picked up his pearl-handled .45, checked that it was loaded and that the safety was most definitely ON, tucked it into the small of his back, and walked out to meet his brother.

oooOOOooo

If you’re worried about an attack, the safest rooms in any hotel are those near an emergency exit stairwell on the second through fourth floors, but never on the top floor, and as far from the lobby as possible. No Winchester – no hunter – will ever forget these rules. Sam cursed as he considered the implications of that knowledge in light of the fact that he was being hunted himself. The man with the Charger would be in one of the rooms on the north side of the building, near the stairs, on the second or third floor of this four-story hotel, and he’d know Sam would have booked one of those rooms as well. If Charger Guy was watching for Sam’s arrival – and Sam had to assume he was – he’d know where Sam was headed.

Sam considered entering the building through the lobby, taking the elevator up floor by floor, and clearing each hallway in turn. This would give himself as much time as possible to see the other hunter if Charger Guy was coming for him. He discarded the thought, however; too much likelihood that a civilian would be caught in the crossfire in a hotel hallway. Thunder rolled in the distance and a few scattered raindrops began to fall as Sam walked instead toward a metal door he knew would lead to the hotel’s north stairway. Checking to see that there was no one nearby, he quietly drew his weapon, flicked the safety off, and slipped into the staircase, immediately scanning his surroundings before pointing his Taurus up the steep steps toward the landings above. He heard the rain begin to fall in earnest behind him, drowning out all outside noise and creating an echoing, confined chamber in the stairwell before the door clanged shut. He moved toward the base of the stairs, pistol raised, and just caught a glimpse of a dark head as it ducked back from the railing above. 

“Whoa. Sam.” That voice, familiar from the phone calls and… somewhere else, echoed down the concrete staircase, though Sam couldn’t see the man now.

Sam tucked himself close to the wall, keeping his pistol aimed toward his unseen stalker. “Who are you?” He shouted, his voice reverberating loudly. It occurred to him that any bullet fired in here would become a danger to both of them.

The voice sounded confident and firm, “I’m your brother.”

“Yeah? What’s your name, ‘brother’?”

“My name is Dean Winchester. You’re Sam Winchester. Our father was John Winchester. I’m your brother.” Again, the man sounded confident rather than threatening.

_So, insane then. Okay._ Sam moved cautiously along the wall, winding almost silently upward step by step. His Taurus remained lifted in the man’s direction although he really hoped he wouldn’t have to shoot. “I don’t have a brother.”

“Sam, listen to me,” answered the man, “you’ve been cursed. Or maybe it’s a spell, I don’t know. Some freaking supernatural bastard got you. I am your brother. You don’t remember me, but I remember you.” The man’s words stopped as Sam rounded the corner to the second landing and they saw one another over the stairwell railings. Sam steadily sighted along his pistol and found a Colt 1911 pointing back down at him with equally deadly accuracy. A note of – was that fear? Desperation? – something not confidence finally entered the man’s voice. “I need you to listen to me, Sammy.”

Sam’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. No one had called him ‘Sammy’ in a long, LONG time. “It’s Sam,” he said calmly, continuing to climb. “I used to have a brother. He’s dead now, and you’re not him.”

It took Dean a moment to realize what Sam meant. “You remember Adam?” Dean didn’t know whether it hurt more that Sammy didn’t remember him, or that Sammy _did_ remember some other person as his brother. No; Adam wasn’t what hurt. What hurt was Sammy currently staring Dean down across the barrel of a gun with cold lack of recognition in his eyes.

Sam’s jaw tightened, but his hands remained firm as he replied, “If you know who I am, and you know who Adam is, you know that he and I spent a whole lot of quality time together in a not so pleasant place. Something like that builds memories. On the other hand, I have no memories of you.”

That pleading tone was more pronounced as the man replied, “I remember you. Sam. I remember you. I know you better than anyone else.”

Dean looked at his brother, so close now that he could almost touch him. Safe; unhurt; cursed. Dean made a decision. He lifted his right hand away from the pearl handled grips of his pistol, holding it up in the universal ‘I surrender’ pose before he carefully lowered the gun to the ground with his left. Sam’s hands followed the movement all the way down. “Let me help you remem--” Dean’s voice was cut off mid-word as he was slammed face first against the concrete wall, his right hand painfully wrenched upwards behind him and the muzzle of his brother’s Taurus tucked against the nape of his neck. Fuck. In his efforts to move slowly and appear non-threatening, he’d forgotten how freakishly strong and fast his baby brother could be.

“Walk with me,” said Sam, his voice low and holding the kind of cold menace Dean had only ever heard directed at others -- the ‘others’ who Sam meant to kill.

The tone and his current position had Dean switching smoothly and automatically from ‘brother’ to ‘hunter’. He assessed his options. He could fight; through long practice, he knew Sam’s weaknesses and how to get inside of his brother’s long reach, but a fight in these close confines would result in at least one of them getting hurt, possibly even killed by the pistol currently pointing at Dean’s head. He could run; but again, Sam had his 9 mil out and ready, and Dean didn’t feel like getting shot today. Or he could do as the taller man said. Dean put his hands non-threateningly out to his sides and allowed his brother to pat him down.

Sam searched Dean carefully, removing a stash of weapons impressive for both its lethality and its variety, as well as the case folder Dean had tucked into the back of his belt. Once the search was complete, Sam indicated Dean should walk, and followed him up the stairs and out onto the third floor.

Dean was not surprised to see that Sam was prodding him toward the room directly across the hall from his own. He walked slowly, careful to ensure Sam was well aware of where his hands were and that the younger Winchester didn’t feel threatened. When they reached the room, Sam passed Dean his key card, and Dean unlocked the door and entered still trailed by his brother, the younger man’s pistol never wavering from Dean’s back.

When the door was closed behind them, Dean was directed to sit in a chair inside the living area. Sam tossed handcuffs at the man who claimed to be his brother. “Put ‘em on.” The man did, and Sam lifted his eyebrows, scoffing. “I know you’re a hunter. Tighten them down.”

Dean gritted his teeth, but complied. The cuffs clicked tighter on his wrists. Sam tossed him a pair of shackles next, saying, “Now your ankles.”

Again Dean cuffed himself, struggling slightly as he bent forward to fasten the restraints with hands already tied together. He straightened, studying his brother more closely now that he had a moment. The man with the gun looked like Sam, and not. He looked _harder_ than Dean’s brother ought to, his eyes cold and considering, but the rest of his face almost devoid of emotion. He looked taller, too, somehow filling more space than Sam did, his shoulders square and his back no longer rounded with implied apology for his height and breadth. For a moment, Dean thought of Gadreel, and then of those terrifying months when Sam had no soul. He whispered what might have been a prayer, though whether that invocation was aimed to Chuck -- who wouldn’t listen -- or to Castiel -- who couldn’t answer -- even Dean couldn’t have said. “Please let Sam be Sam. Please.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. The whisper had been low, but apparently he’d heard it. He didn’t comment on it though, instead picking up a length of rope which he began winding from Dean’s cuffed hands and feet to the chair, fastening Dean thoroughly to its unyielding surface.

Once Dean was securely -- _crazy securely,_ he thought, testing his bonds -- fastened to the hotel chair, Sam stepped back, then sat on one of the beds and studied Dean closely. He placed his weapon within easy reach on the bed beside him, crossed his arms tightly, and finally spoke. “Who are you, and how did you find me?” The voice was firm and guarded, the voice Sam used when questioning an unfriendly stranger. The voice he used with demons.

Dean winced to hear it aimed at him, not out of fear of Sam but from the memory of the last time Sam had used that tone toward him. He suppressed the worry that this would be the tone Sam used with him forever. _No. Not forever. Just until he throws me out of the hotel. Just until he leaves me._ Dean took a deep breath to suppress that entire line of thinking, and answered calmly, “I’m Dean Winchester. I am your brother.”

“My brother is dead.” Flat. Cold. Impatient. “How did you find me?”

“We were in the hotel in LA together, just a few days ago. We salted and burned a vengeful spirit there, together. Guy who was killing ex-wives.”

“Together.”

“Yes. Together. Like always.” Dean was talking slowly, his voice that of a teacher or a father explaining something to a sick child. He kept the encroaching panic carefully concealed, as always, behind layers of brave mask and stony calm. “We’ve been hunting together since you were a kid, except for some time you spent at college. You, me, and our dad.”

“My dad is dead, too.” Sam replied, “You’re oh for two.”

“I know our dad is,” and here Dean’s voice cracked for the first time. “I know he’s gone. You and me, we gave him a hunter’s funeral, together, about ten years ago. He’s the reason you came back to hunting.”

“Uh huh.” Sam’s expressive face registered disbelief, its lines saying ‘bullshit’ as eloquently as ever. Dean almost smiled at the familiarity before schooling his face to sincerity. _Don’t piss off the well-armed, amnesiac hunter._

He continued, “We’ve lost a lot of people, but we did what we needed to do. Together. ‘Cause we’re family.”

“I don’t have any family.”

Dean’s composure did slip that time. It felt like he had been slapped. “You do. You just don’t remember.”

“So who does?”

“What?”

“You say we’re brothers, but I’ve been, what? Cursed? Hit with a spell? And forgotten you.” He waited for Dean’s affirmative nod, “I’m not saying that’s out of the question. I’m just saying I’m gonna need some outside corroboration before we have a heartfelt brotherly reunion. So who knows you? You’ve got connections. I’ve got connections. Those connections should overlap if we’re brothers. Give me a name. Who knows you’re my brother?”

Dean’s mouth twisted as he heard the disbelieving sarcasm laced through Sam’s questions. He recalled the conversation he’d had the day before with Garth. _Would_ any of their connections remember they were brothers? If Garth didn’t, probably the humans were out. Cas was gone. Crowley was dead. Demons? _Yeah, I want him to believe me, not try to exorcise me._

“Well?”

“I don’t know. I…” Dean started to explain, but was cut off as Sam stood, seeming to loom over him. He held his pearl-handled pistol again, though it was held loosely by his side.

“You don’t know.” Sam interrupted, “You don’t know anyone who knows me? Or you don’t…”

“Garth doesn’t remember you!” Dean nearly shouted, frustration finally breaking through his demeanor. “You know Garth, I know Garth, Garth knows us, but he thinks my name is Dean Wynt. I talked to him yesterday,”

“…and he told you where to find me. Who else did he tell?” Sam strode to the window, twitching the curtains aside to peer through the driving rain toward the parking lot below. No one was moving down there -- yet. “Who else is here? Walt Lennersen? Roy Griend?” He quirked his head and almost laughingly added, “You didn’t come here alone did you? ‘Cause any hunter in America can tell you THAT’S a bad idea.”

_And what does that mean?_ thought Dean as he responded, “I haven’t seen Walt or Roy since Kansas in May.”

“Yeah? And what did you and the boys do in Kansas?”

“We…” Dean started before deciding to change tracks, “It doesn’t matter. They’re not here. I didn’t talk to them.” The younger Winchester’s back was turned toward him as Sam inspected the cars far below. Dean took the opportunity to carefully ease his wrists in the cuffs, looking for…

“Stop that.”

Dean’s hands stilled. Best not to give Sam any more reason for suspicion.

Sam was looking directly at him again, considering carefully. “I haven’t talked to Garth in months. He’s not exactly a fan. So if I didn’t tell Garth where I was, he couldn’t tell you where I was. You haven’t told me yet how you found me. I need the truth from you.”

“What you need to know is in that folder. That’s how I found you.” He nodded toward the case folder Sam had tossed on the bed while he’d tied Dean to the chair.  _And why did I tell him that? So much for not raising suspicion. I should have left the folder in my room._

Sam moved to the bed. He looked Dean directly in the eyes. “I need you to be quiet for a few minutes,” he said almost apologetically, for a moment sounding much more like the Sam that Dean loved. After a short pause to ensure Dean was going to comply long enough for Sam to look through the file’s contents, the younger man flipped the safety back on his pistol and set it carefully on the bed farther from Dean’s chair, exchanging it for the folder. He opened it. Nearly the moment his eyes hit the paper he began to tense up again. Dean saw his brother’s jaw clench, the muscles working under the skin as Sam took in what he held – page after page written in Sam’s own handwriting. Sam’s voice was a growl when he spoke again. “Where did you get this? Tell me.”

“From you.” Dean replied, his eyes locked on Sam’s.

“Tell me how.”

“You wrote it. You showed it to me. We discussed it after we finished our last case. You left it on the table of our hotel room in LA when you left to come here.”

“And that’s how you knew I’d be here?”

Dean didn’t answer. He watched his brother’s eyes, seeing a glimmer of confusion or at least uncertainty begin to form under the façade of cold anger and wariness. Sam wasn’t sure what was going on. No one would have seen that who didn’t know Sam very, very well. Dean waited for his brother to think the situation through, expecting the younger man to take time to process the evidence in front of him, but Sam continued with stubborn self-preservation.

“Tell me who else knows I’m here.”

That headache was returning. Dean wished he could rub his eyes. “Maybe Garth. I didn’t tell him, but Garth probably figured it out by now.”

“Great,” Sam grunted, “So the only real question is ‘Who did Garth tell?’” He stood again, taking the case file and tucking his 9 mil into the back of his jeans. He pulled the other man’s key card out of a pocket, where he’d put it after patting Wynt down in the stairwell. “Stay there. Stay quiet.” Sam told Dean, and walked out the door.

oooOOOooo

Sam allowed the door to close behind him before leaning against the hallway wall, his hand to his temple, allowing the familiar spinning sensation to abate. He rarely used that talent against anyone -- let alone a hunter -- due to both the resulting dizziness and the risk that it would confirm what most hunters already thought they knew. After ten years with the accursed things, Sam’s psychic abilities weren’t exactly the world’s best-kept secret, but keeping them as merely a rumor among the hunter community at least limited the number of idiots who attempted to kill him per year. He’d have to wipe the guy’s memory before he let him go. If he let him go. If he was hiding something, Wynt wouldn’t be leaving this hotel at all.

But the man couldn’t be lying, at least not consciously. Sam’s subtle and then less-than-subtle pressures on Charger Guy’s brain had ensured that this ‘Dean’ had told Sam the truth. Or at least, what ‘Dean’ thought was the truth. It was possible that Wynt could resist the mental pushing, especially if Dean was cursed with the same abilities that Sam himself was, but it was unlikely. Azazel’s little game a decade before had wiped most of Sam’s peers off of the planet. No, Dean Wynt believed Sam was his brother. Which meant that either Sam had forgotten he had a brother, or Dean was remembering family he didn’t have.

Sam pulled out his phone and hit speed dial number 1. When a voice answered, he said, “Ellen? Sam. You ever heard of a hunter named Dean Wynt?”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**\- 4 Rhome far from Hhome-**

 

Ellen reached for the ringing phone and then strained to hear the caller’s voice over the din of the packed roadhouse. “Yeah, Harvelle’s.”

_“Ellen? Sam. You ever heard of a hunter named Dean Wynt?”_

Ellen smirked. Sam Winchester was practically her stepson. He’d spent half his childhood romping around this roadhouse – at least a third of that time with his nose in some book or another hiding from his father under one of the tables in this very room. And now? The boy never visited, rarely even called, and when he did, it was like this. All business. She knew Sam didn’t want her and Jo tarnished with the rumors which had lately grown up around him, but still…

Her voice held even more of its wry drawl than usual as she answered, “Wynt? Super-handsome pretty boy? Bow legs and a permanent wise-ass expression on his face?”

“I wouldn’t call him ‘super handsome’...”

“Then you’d be wrong.” The response was immediate and predictably blunt, but amusement came clearly through 800 miles of telephone wires. “Yeah. I know Dean. Sorta. He comes through here from time to time. Jo’s got a crush on him. Keeps trying to convince him she’s ready to go back out on hunts again. I think he’s half ready to help her do it, too. What do you want to know about him?”

There was no way that sort of thing would go over well with the overprotective woman. Picturing Wynt at the roadhouse attempting to flirt with Jo, Ellen’s faux-grouchiness, and Jo’s mischievous smile dented Sam’s cultivated distance. _Good Chuck, he missed them._ But that line of thinking would get him nowhere. He pushed it aside and cleared his throat. _Bring it back to the matter at hand, Winchester._ “Does Wynt have a brother?”

“A brother?” Ellen thought hard, remembering everything she could about the smart-arse cowboy who had so enthralled her daughter. “Nope. Don’t think he has any family, come to think of it. Used to hang out with Bobby Singer and that crowd. Maybe they’d know.”

Sam grunted another laugh, this one laced with irony. He didn’t really know Singer, but like most hunters he’d heard quite a bit about that patriarch of his profession. “’That crowd’ meaning who? Isn’t that crowd basically dead now?”

“There’s a few of ‘em still around. Hold on.” Sam heard her put the phone down and then speak to someone nearby, but he couldn’t make out her words. She came back a minute or so later, saying, “Yeah, I’ve got a hunter here by the name of Jody Mills. She says Dean’s a loner. No family since Bobby died.”

“She said Dean was kin to Bobby Singer?”

“Yup. Nephew or something.”

Now that was interesting. Sam didn’t know much, but he’d heard good things about Singer. According to his sources, Bobby Singer hadn’t had the same type of prejudices regarding psychics that a lot of other hunters did. The old man had even hung out with another psychic Sam knew and trusted, a woman named Pamela Barnes. Singer was a pretty good guy, actually, according to Pamela. So if Bobby was Dean’s kin and Jo was hung up on him, why hadn’t Sam heard of Dean Wynt before now? Their circles did overlap. Why had no one ever mentioned this guy before?

Sam kept his voice light as he resumed the conversation. “Jo thinks he’s cute, huh?”

“Son, everybody thinks that boy’s cute,” Ellen growled. “Jo thinks he’s ‘ _dreamy’_. It pisses me off.”

At that, Sam actually laughed. Ellen would always be Ellen. He made a mental note to call Jo, said a few more polite, if meaningless, phrases to the woman who’d been the only mother he’d ever known, and hung up.

Half way across the country, Ellen set her phone aside as well, gathered herself together, and went to attempt to get more information out of Jody Mills. Jody had once had a kid herself and now had a couple of foster daughters. Maybe Ellen could appeal to motherhood, and the sheriff would help her convince Jo to give up on that hot hothead hunter. At the very least, she could get more information for Sam.

Putting the phone back into his pocket, Sam poked his head back into his room to confirm that his command for Wynt to sit still and shut up had stuck. It had; the man remained tied and seated. _He’s flirting with Jo, huh? Good luck with that, bucko. And if you hurt her, you’ll have more than just Ellen to answer to._ “Stay put, Dreamy Dean,” he said to reinforce the compulsion, and smirked at the look of confusion that answered.

Sam closed the door and continued across the hall to his captive’s room. He slipped inside with his pistol out, but quickly confirmed that the other man was rooming alone. He took a wide, appraising look at the room as a whole, and then began to systematically search Dreamy Dean’s possessions.

oooOOOooo

Dean considered all he’d seen so far and felt a painful squeezing in his chest. It _was_ Sam. There were glimmers of his brother; he could see them. But those hints were pushed far down beneath layers of distrust and survival instinct. Dean had to get past those layers, but first he had to get Sam to trust him.

As the younger man had made his phone call in the hall, Dean had carefully explored the ropes binding his cuffs to the chair. He could feel an opening he was pretty sure he could exploit, and Sam’s inspection of his clothing had missed the paperclip Dean kept sewn into his right sleeve, but he stayed where he was. Sam had to find Dean where he’d been left. Dean had to convince his brother to let him free by his own decision so they could fix this.

They had to fix this.

Five minutes after Sam had poked his head into his room and taken off again, the younger man returned with one of Dean’s duffel bags in his hands. Sam reached into the bag to pull an item out, and Dean’s stomach flip-flopped when he recognized it. A small, cheap-seeming charm on a worn leather cord. Dean swallowed hard and looked into his brother’s face.

Sam’s voice was wary as he held the amulet. “Tell me about this.”

“It’s yours,” Dean started before backtracking. “Well, it’s mine, but you gave it to me. Twice. Sort of.” Dean’s thoughts got tangled and he tried again. “It’s an amulet. You gave it to me when we were kids. It can sense when God is nearby, only...”

Sam barked a laugh and spoke over Dean’s voice, and the two men were startled as they both said simultaneously, “…Chuck’s not coming back.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Sam nodded. “No. No, he’s not. Chuck hasn’t been by to see me in a long time. Not since I gave him back that amulet and he went to visit with some…family. But last time I saw him, Chuck had the amulet. How did you get it? And while we’re at it, why do you know that name?”

Dean sat silently until Sam rephrased the question. “Tell me why you know Chuck.”

“I know him for the same reason you do.”

“I doubt that very strongly,” Sam retorted, unable to suppress a shudder or a glance to the corner of the room where Lucifer sat quietly reading the case file Sam had taken from Wynt. The devil didn’t bother Sam much these days – years of practice told Sam that Lucifer wouldn’t harm him if Sam remembered that the archangel was only a vision – but he was always there. The last time Sam had seen Chuck, Chuck had given him a blessing which ensured that Sam _could_ remember Lucifer wasn’t real. Other than Chuck’s decision to rescue Sam from the cage, that insurance was the only real protection Sam had against the devil himself. Sam highly doubted that Dean’s conversations with the Almighty had been similar. “Tell me about Chuck.”

Dean’s mouth obediently opened, but no sound came out. When Sam looked at him, Dean’s face had dropped into a scowl, recognition coming into his eyes. His mouth opened again, then closed with obvious effort. His eyes squinted half closed in what looked like pain before he looked up at Sam and almost barked, “What did you do to me?”

Sam’s eyebrows rose. From time to time, when Sam used his accursed abilities gently enough, someone could resist his requests for information; but Sam wasn’t using a particularly light touch here. He hadn’t ‘requested’ anything. He had outright commanded Dreamy Dean to answer him. Dean shouldn’t even know he was being manipulated, let alone have the ability to refuse to cooperate.

And yet…

“What the fuck, Sam?” Dean began to struggle with his bonds, Sam’s control slipping entirely. “What’s going on?”

“STOP,” Sam commanded, then thought better of it and turned off the juice. “Just,” he said again, “stop. Listen to me. I need to know who you are, and I’m not going to let you go until I do.”

Dean’s hands paused momentarily as he looked up at this man who was his brother and wasn’t. “I told you who I am.”

“I thought you did. But now I’m not so sure what you told me is true. Not a lot of people can decide not to answer my questions truthfully. At least, not a lot of humans.” He pulled out another item he’d taken from Dean’s room, a long thin silvery blade seemingly with no obvious cutting edge that Sam knew from experience was exceedingly sharp anyway. “I’ve seen these before,” he continued, “and never in a hunter’s possession.” He stepped closer to the man tied to the chair.

Dean’s lips tightened as he realized what Sam intended to do. “I’m not an… Ouch! Damn it!” he yelped, as Sam drew the blade across his shoulder. “Freaking son of a bitch. Cut it out, Sam!”

_No lightshow. Not an angel._ “Well, then that leaves the other option.” Sam stepped back to give himself room and held his right hand out toward the entity tied to the chair. He concentrated, looking for the taint which must be inside of the other hunter.

Dean’s eyes widened and his body stilled as he realized what his brother was doing. His voice lowered and went soft now, almost a whisper, not quite a prayer. “Shit, Sam. No. No, I’m not a demon either. What the hell have they done to you?”

Wynt was right. No demon taint existed inside him at the moment, though Sam felt a residual echo very much akin to what demonic possession felt like. _Almost as if Dean were, what? An ex-demon? Brother to a demon? Or just plain cursed?_ It had to be that. “No. You’re not. Which means I’ve got some bad news for you.” He pulled out the last of the items he’d found in Dean’s room, and showed it to the man on the chair. It was a photograph of the two of them, taken years earlier from the look of it. They stood with their arms over Ellen, Jo, a man in a trench coat Sam didn’t know, and a man Sam barely knew – Bobby Singer – who was incongruously sitting in a wheelchair. On the back of the photo were each of their names, four of the six followed by ‘RIP’ and dates. “I don’t think I’m the one who’s cursed.”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Because Jo and Ellen aren’t dead.”

At that pronouncement, Dean slumped forward against his bonds. Sam saw disbelief and bewilderment in the other man’s eyes, highlighted in stark relief as lightning blazed in the window.

oooOOOooo

Far above, Romulus laughed with wild glee. The storm intensified below as Handsome Boy and Strange Boy, his surrogates on Earth, raged with him. He was the storm, they the lightning.

And these new boys? Sam and Dean would become the storm or they would ride it to its end. Either way would teach the boys not to throw away their brotherhood with petty human squabbles. Meanwhile, either would serve to amuse Romulus.

oooOOOooo

At least thirty seconds of silence passed as Dean processed the information Sam had given him. Ellen and Jo alive. Certainly it wasn’t out of the range of possibility. They’d seen others come back from worse fates. Dean had even seen Jo, in a sense, as a ghost. They’d both seen Ellen some years after her death when Balthazar had unsunk the Titanic. So was that what this was? An alternate timeline? A timeline where Dean wasn’t a Winchester? Where he and Sam didn’t even work together?

No. There’s a lot of freaky shit in this world, but Dean knew in his bones that a world where he and Sam were strangers wasn’t possible. No matter where they went, no matter when, Dean and Sam would always be together. Dean knew this. He held it, as he’d told his brother to do so many years before, as stone number one.

Sam’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “So the only real question is, what do we do about this?”

_No. That’s not the only real question. It’s not the question at all. The question is, who did this and how do we kill it?_ Dean thought. But that didn’t matter. In this case, the answer to the real question and the answer to Sam’s question were identical. His voice firm and sure, he answered his BROTHER. “We fix it. We find the evil son of a bitch who cursed… me…” His brother would have noticed that pause. Did this version of Sam hear it? “…and we put a stake through its heart. Then we behead it, dismember it, salt it, burn it, and spit on the ashes.”

Sam smiled slightly at that, the left side of his lips quirking up just enough that a hint of a dimple creased one cheek. “Yeah, at least some of that’s on the to-do list,” he replied, “but that’s not what I meant by ‘What do we do about this?’”

A second passed before Dean caught on. “You meant, ‘What do _you_ do about _me_?’”

Sam nodded.

Dean considered the problem.

“You’re using your psychic thing again,” Dean said, looking at Sam for confirmation. His brother’s clenched jaw and thin lips were all the acknowledgement he needed. “Use it now. Read my mind or whatever. Am I lying? Am I thinking even the slightest bit of doing you harm, Sammy?”

“MY NAME IS SAM.” The flash of anger in Sam’s eyes was the first true heat Dean had seen in the man standing before him. It broke through Sam’s cold shell like the lightning slashing brilliantly outside.

“Sam.” Dean corrected, a placating tone in his voice. “Fine. Sam. Look at me. I’m not gonna hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. So make it an order. Do…” he took a deep breath, not wanting to acknowledge even to himself what he was asking his brother to do. “Do whatever it is that you did before. Tell me not to do anything to you. Tell me to work this case with you. Let’s salt and burn this thing.” And if a note of pleading had entered into his voice before the end, no one could blame him, could they?

Sam considered this offer – another hunter _asking_ to be put under a compulsion to cooperate so strong that it would be unbreakable. And it would have to be strong. This Dean Wynt had already shown that he could resist the commands Sam gave him. However, he’d also shown no inclination thus far to harm Sam. If Wynt really did think Sam was his brother -- his little brother, if the incessant use of that annoying diminutive ‘Sammy’ was any indication -- he’d already be halfway convinced not to decide Sam was something that needed to be hunted. That would make the compulsion easier to apply. More than that, if Sam was going to solve this mystery, he’d need to keep Wynt around long enough to figure out if the counter-curse had worked.

Sam nodded briskly as he came to his decision. “This is going to hurt,” was the only warning Dean heard before a crushing _force_ squeezed Dean’s brain so hard he couldn’t even grunt in pain.

It probably lasted only a fraction of a second, but the blinding, crushing power inside Dean’s head made the room flash and swirl around him in a seemingly endless cyclone. Bright white light and blaring uncoordinated sounds invaded his senses as his breath rushed out in a gasp.

And then it stopped so suddenly that the absence of pain was equally shocking.

When Dean was finally able to think again, his first move was to make sure his eyeballs hadn’t actually been squeezed from their sockets. When he’d confirmed they were still attached, he wrenched his eyes open. He saw his brother half lying and half leaning, propped on the closer hotel bed, both hands holding his head as if to prevent someone from tearing it into two pieces. Blood dribbled from Sam’s nose.

For a moment, both men panted with the effort of controlling their ragged breathing. Then Sam slowly shoved himself to a standing position, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and stumbled over to untie Dean. Neither brother said anything while the ropes were loosened and the cuffs unhooked.

Once free, Dean stayed in the chair, working his hands and feet through the pins and needles which always began when he was restrained, and watching Sam warily as he stepped back and then dropped to sit on the bed, pulling the Taurus he’d left there into his lap.

“Shit Sammy. …Er… Sam.” Dean said. “Shit.” It was all he could think to say.


	5. Rhope

Dean considered how he felt as he walked to his own room a few minutes later, Sam watching him carefully from his door across the hall. Sam had obviously done _something_ to him -- that pain and pressure hadn’t been nothing -- but Dean couldn’t actually _feel_ anything now, other than tiredness and that headache he’d had all day. He wanted to help Sam, sure, and that was supposedly the compulsion Sam had given him, but he’d wanted to help Sam before that crushing power had invaded his head too. Maybe there was nothing to feel because nothing had changed. Or maybe -- and at this Dean couldn’t control a grimace -- he was so in thrall to Sam right now that he _couldn’t_ feel it.

How the hell had Sam gotten his psychic mojo back after all of this time? That wasn’t a memory thing, was it? Sam hadn’t just forgotten how to pull demons out of human hosts; he’d been unable to do it since he got back from hell. And he’d never had the ability to implant commands into people’s heads. They’d seen that particular power in others of Azazel’s kids, Andy and Ansel -- two brothers, ironically. So, if Sam had added Ansel and Andy’s power to his list of psychic mumbo-jumbo, what else could he do? And if he’d never lost his mojo, what else was different about Sam? What else was different about _everything_? Garth, Jo, Ellen… _was_ it Dean who was cursed? He considered the possibility…for about five seconds. No. It had to be Sam. Dean pulled his feet back onto that first, foundational stone. Sam was his BROTHER.

Dean picked up his computer, scrolled through for the email from Garth, and returned to Sam’s room. Sam reached for the laptop without speaking and Dean handed it to him with no complaints or wise-ass remarks. Huh. Maybe he was different.

 _What else was different? To solve the case they had to know._ Compelled by a need to help solve the case which was stronger than his need to protect himself, Dean blurted out the question before he had time to think about it. “Did you go to hell?” Yup. Order followed. There it was. Fuck.

Sam went white, his knuckles tensing on the laptop. He let his eyes automatically track to an empty corner, before he regained control of his façade and pointedly looked back at the computer screen. “Yes, and we’re not going to talk about that,” was all he said before changing the subject entirely. “You got this from Garth?”

Dean looked from the empty corner back to Sam, and then down at the screen. “Yeah. It’s a list of…”

“Things which make people forget someone’s someone’s brother. I can read the email, Wynt. It’s a long list. Where should I be looking?”

Dean took back the laptop and scrolled to the relevant place, handing it back to Sam without commenting on the name Sam had used. He gritted his teeth. Now that he was paying attention, the ‘compulsion to help Sam’ thing was already feeling like ‘compulsion to follow Sam’s orders,’ and that was going to get real old real fast.

Sam looked down at the screen, reading “Handsome Boy and Strange Boy (Wichita Tribal legend, central Texas) – Baby (Handsome Boy) born; father buries afterbirth under a tree. Strange Boy is formed from the afterbirth and raised by tree gods or forest animals (Legend varies here, Dean-o). As Handsome Boy grows, he is visited by Strange Boy who tells him they’re brothers, but when Strange Boy leaves, he whispers ‘forget,’ and Handsome Boy forgets he exists. In Wichita tribe, magic is attributed to twins. When twin boys are born, the older brother is ‘Handsome Boy’ and is raised to be a hunter. The younger is ’Strange Boy.’ Younger twins are considered good candidates for medicine men.” 

Sam pulled the most perfect bitch face Dean had seen in years. “So, in this story, I’m the magical Strange Boy?” _And doesn’t that just fit?_

“Yup,” Dean replied, unable to keep a broad grin from his face, “and I’m Handsome Boy, the hunter. Sometimes, it seems like the lore was written for us, you know?”

“Except we’re not actually brothers, Wynt.”

“Yeah,” and suddenly the smile was gone. “Right.”

oooOOOooo

By mutual agreement -- who was Dean kidding -- after a suggestion from Sam, the two men traded documentation, each reading through what the other had learned about Rhome, the surrounding area, the Wichita legend, and the case as it had played out so far. It became apparent immediately that the two cases were, in fact, one and the same. The story of Strange Boy and Handsome Boy overlapped perfectly with what had happened to the victims. This surprised neither hunter. When did two supernatural things ever happen in the same town at the same time?

In the legend, Strange Boy is discovered by their father on one of his visits, and their father sets them to quests, which include hunting monsters, including whatever had killed their mother.

 _Don’t know about Wynt, Sam thought, but too freaking right, this was written for me_.

Together, Handsome Boy and Strange Boy catch and defeat a water spirit who capsizes boats and drowns people in rivers, and later kill a nest of snakes by turning their own legs to stone and stomping the snakes into oblivion. Eventually, the boys capture lightning and thunder to become the demigods who, in Plains Indian lore, control storms.

Sam took a moment to look out the window. He stared pointedly past Lucifer, who was idly trying to freeze and shatter the window, to the rain-drenched Texas views beyond. Lightning flashed and thunder pealed almost continually under skies so dark it seemed night had arrived already. _Demigods. Great. Why can’t it ever be vampires anymore?_

While Sam explored Garth’s too-familiar legend, Dean read through Sam’s almost obsessively meticulous case notes. From the corner of his eye, he surreptitiously watched his brother. It was pretty obvious to Dean that something was wrong with his brother. Something other than the obvious fact that Sam didn’t remember _being_ his brother. Periodically, the younger man would grimace or scowl for no particular reason, or seem to startle at a sound Dean could not hear. At those times, he’d stare toward the windows as if looking at something unpleasant. Often, Sam would then put his hand to either the amulet, which now rested on the hotel table in front of him, or to his pistol beside it. Dean thought he knew what this was. He had seen this behavior in his brother before, and it physically hurt to see Sam reliving it.

About the eighth time Sam glared at the nothing beside the window, Dean couldn’t stop himself from saying, “You’re seeing Lucifer, aren’t you? You know he’s not real, right?”

Sam startled as if Dean had slapped him. No one – not Ellen, not Adam, not even the real Lucifer, so far as Sam was aware – knew about these visions. They’d started almost immediately after his return from hell (…wait, had they? Maybe it had been later than that?), and at first he’d thought the archangel really had followed him back. He’d almost lost his mind to them, ending up in a hospital with a white room and soft restraints before Chuck had realized what was going on. Chuck’s intervention had relieved Sam’s mind, allowing him to remember that Lucifer wasn’t real, but hadn’t ended the visions themselves. In all the time since then, Sam had told NO ONE of his hitchhiking archangel.

Sam’s hand suddenly twinged and he rubbed the cramp away without realizing he was doing it.

No one knew about Lucifer except Chuck. And Dean Wynt knew Chuck.

Dean watched Sam absently rub the palm of his hand. He could see the faded line of a scar there. As the silence lingered, Sam’s eyes darted from the empty corner by the window to Dean and finally settled on the amulet Sam had found in Dean’s room.

After a moment, the younger man seemed to reach a decision and his face firmed. “Don’t do that.” Sam said suddenly, pointedly returning his eyes to his computer screen, not looking at either the window or Dean now. His fingers were white at the knuckles, the muscles in the back of his hand tense, but he still didn’t seem to consciously realize that he gripped the scar.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t pretend you know anything about me. You don’t, Wynt. And even if you did, it’d be none of your business.” As Sam resumed reading, his hand loosened, and then again strayed to the Taurus on the table beside his laptop. Dean didn’t know if the implied threat was aimed toward Sam’s vision of Lucifer or himself this time. “I think you should go back to your room now.”

And Dean had little choice but to obey.

oooOOOooo

Uncomfortable dreams weren’t exactly an unusual occurrence for Sam, and nightmares of the apocalypse were certainly frequent visitors, so there was no surprise that night when Sam revisited the town where he hadn’t killed Lucifer.

They’d been so close.

Ruby. That damned Ruby. If only they’d known.

But they hadn’t. And Ruby, with Ash, had rebuilt Samuel Colt’s revolver. And Sam, Jo, and Ellen had tracked Lucifer here. And he’d shot Lucifer. And Lucifer had laughed.

It was all so familiar, this dream. Sam had seen this day a hundred times. So why was it different tonight? Sam’s mind’s eye seemed unfocused, strangely doubled as if he were replaying the scene from two separate perspectives, one his own and one just slightly off center, as if he were standing beside himself.

The doubled dream progressed, as it always did, down a deserted street. At a scream from Jo, it sped up as the hellhounds found them, chased them. The doubled perspectives bounced and wobbled nauseatingly, interweaving and ducking out of synchronicity. The scream as a hound tore through Jo’s clothing and raked her flesh seemed to come from two directions instead of one.

That wound had left Jo with a permanent limp and had ended her hunting career.

Or? Had that wound been worse? In the doubled dream, as Sam and Ellen fled carrying Jo into a storefront, was there someone else holding her too? Was Jo bleeding far more than she had on that already horrible day? No one could have survived the wound Jo seemed to have in this nightmare. In the confusion of the chase, had Jo been hurt that badly?

No. His mind rejected the thought. No, Jo had survived. They’d built that bomb. They’d trapped the hellhounds. They’d slipped out the back as… but the doubled vision showed two people leaving that hardware store, and neither Jo nor Ellen was one of them.

And the explosion…

Sam jerked awake, screaming, as Lucifer howled with laughter from the bed beside his own.

oooOOOooo

Dean had driven through the entire night before last, and between the storm and his worry for Sam, he hadn’t exactly gotten the best sleep last night. So when Sam walked right into his room without knocking at 5:30 AM, Dean wasn’t exactly ready to face the day.

“You do sleep, don’t you?” he said, only half teasing, when he realized he wasn’t alone.

“I slept. Now I’m awake. Let’s go.”

Dean managed to crack his eyes open. Sam was standing at the foot of his bed, just out of reach, dressed in his familiar flannel, his hair slicked back from a recent shower.

“Go where?”

“Quarry. I want to see that boat.”

While Dreamy Dean dressed in the bathroom, Sam took the chance to search his room again. Aside from a frankly unnerving number of weapons secreted in every corner, the room contained few indications of who this Dean Wynt was. Sam had hoped to find enough hints that he could coach the guy back to his own memory. The sooner Wynt remembered who he was, the sooner Sam could be back on the road.

What he did find disturbed him more than he was ready to admit. These demigods had spun an entire life for Wynt in which Sam was his brother and John his father. That life didn’t seem to include Adam, strangely, but did feature Sam’s mother, a woman even Sam had not actually known. That infant in Mary’s arms was Sam, but the blonde boy on John’s shoulders beside them didn’t exist in Sam’s version of this picture.

 _Or, did it?_ As in the dream, Sam’s vision seemed to double for a fraction of a second. He shook his head to clear it and then hastily dropped the photo when Dean entered the room, fully dressed. Wynt saw what he’d been looking at and opened his mouth to speak, but Sam interrupted with a peremptory “Good. Let’s go. Take the angel blade.”

“Why?”

“Because I left mine in the pit with Adam,” Sam replied, in an almost conversational tone, and walked out of the room.

“Right.” _Right…_ Dean picked up the blade and followed his captor and his brother.

They took the stairs to the parking lot, still wet from last night’s storm, and walked toward the Impala. Dean headed for the driver’s side automatically, only reversing course when he noticed the confused look Sam was giving him. He climbed in on the passenger side instead. When Sam started the engine, Baby’s radio began to belt out some rockabilly country song. Dean reached to change the channel, again without thinking.

Sam swatted his hand away. “My car, my music. Shotgun shuts his cakehole,” and he pulled the car onto the road.

oooOOOooo

The quarry was deserted as Sam and Dean pulled off the dirt road at the north end of the crater at twenty minutes past six in the morning. Wynt had remained silent the entire ride, and Sam found himself beginning to believe his directive to follow Sam’s lead had stuck. Without knowing the hunter, he had no idea if Wynt would be at all useful on the case, but least if he was following Sam’s commands it meant Sam didn’t have to worry about the man sticking that angel blade in his ribs while he slept.

They got out of the car almost in unison and stepped toward the rusty chain-link fence which served as possibly the world’s least secure barrier to trespassing. Sam nodded Wynt ahead of him and watched the other hunter slip under an opening almost wide enough to drive the Impala through. Sam followed, trailed by Lucifer, who was visible only to Sam, and by two young Native American boys who neither could see.

oooOOOooo

Romulus watched the odd parade with interest. He hadn’t predicted this. Minus his brother’s mitigating presence, Sam Winchester had retained his ability to control other people. Romulus had expected the often fiery brothers to blow up at one another when they’d met, with at least one of them sparing a bit of blood for Romulus’s amusement; or that the Winchesters’ characteristic stubbornness and unwillingness to hear each other out would drive them apart, allowing Romulus’ game to continue for weeks or maybe longer. As it was, they’d never learn their lesson using this chain of command shit their father had taught them. That wasn’t family. If he wanted them really working together, he’d need to stir the pot a bit. Romulus spoke to Handsome Boy, who passed the command to Strange Boy.

It was time to make his new toys’ lives more entertaining.

oooOOOooo

They scooted down the steep walls to the quarry’s unofficial walking trails, and Sam directed Dean toward the rowboat on the water’s edge. Once there, each Winchester pulled out his EMF reader and scanned the filthy boat. The meters jumped and glowed as if on fire. “Well, I guess that answers that question.” Sam looked up and down the banks, then out over the water. “Feel like playing bait, Wynt?”

Dean bit back a bitter retort and asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“We need to see if we can get these demigods out in the open. Seems like the only way that’s going to happen is if someone’s in the boat.” He outlined his plan to Dean and then, surprisingly, gave the older man a choice. “So, which would you rather? Boat or shore?”

“Boat,” Dean answered without hesitation. If anyone was going to risk drowning, it would be him. “But I want a quid pro quo.”

That scoffing look was back. “A ‘quid pro quo’? Breaking out the Latin?”

“My dad taught me,” Dean growled, almost daring Sam to refute the notion. “Here’s the deal. I play bait, you answer one question. Truthfully, and all-in. The whole truth.”

“I could just order you into the damn boat,” Sam reminded him.

“You could,” Dean admitted, then held his breath. _Please Sam._

The younger man considered the request for a moment before he nodded. “One question. I won’t lie, but I might not give you all the details. Take it or leave it.”

Dean took it.

Sam placed his duffel on the ground and pulled a number of objects from it. A bowl, some herbs, and a number of candles were placed on the ground, and Dean recognized the ingredients for a trapping spell. As Sam mixed the necessary herbs, Dean busied himself drawing the appropriate shape in the dirt and gravel. Sam watched him do it without speaking, then properly positioned the candles within the design Dean had drawn and pulled out a lighter, moving to set the wicks aflame. Dean centered the bowl, glanced at Sam who silently nodded that he was ready, and lit the herbs on fire. Sam grunted in approval. _Wynt’s spell work was sound, at least_ , Sam thought as he surveyed the end result.

The trap wouldn’t actually hold a demigod, unless the entity was a seriously weak one, but with a few words in a dead language, it would summon one and force it to become visible. They’d get a good look at these Handsome and Strange boys this morning.

Sam returned to his duffel and pulled a coil of rope from it. “Arms up,” he said, and wound the rope around Dean’s chest. That done, they pushed the rusty old boat out onto the water. Dean stepped inside, crinkling his nose and grimacing a bit as he nudged a dirty condom away from his right foot. Sam handed him two splintery wooden oars, and Dean sat on the boat’s seat and began to row himself across the fetid green water. The rope played out slowly between them, Sam holding one end with his feet securely on dry land.

Sam began to recite the spell in a clear, loud voice which echoed off of the quarry walls.

Dean hadn’t gone fifty yards when the breeze came up. At first fitful and slight, it built quickly to gusts of remarkable force, driving the quarry lake’s surface into choppy waves which rapidly grew to above Sam’s height as he stood on the shore.

“Fuck.” Sam was struggling with the rope, struggling even to stand upright as the wind tore at his hair and clothes. It stole the words from his mouth as he shouted the words to complete the spell. “ _Vosmet ostende mihi_!” The candles had blown out, and the smoke from the burning herbs spread and flared. “ _Ut cum fiducia_!”

Dean was tossed violently back and forth in the small boat. He dropped the oars and hung on – one hand on the side of the rowboat and the other firmly gripping the rope tied around him. It didn’t help. “SAM!” he yelled, as he toppled head first into the stinking lake, crashing hard against the rusty metal side of the boat as he went into the water.

Sam watched Wynt fall. He held tightly to the rope, which was no longer visible in the crashing waves, and focused on shouting the final words of his spell. “ _Custodi Scientia!_ ” Sam pulled hard on the rope. “ _Ostende mihi te ipsum!_ ” He tore his attention from the water, continuing to pull blindly on the rope even as he stared around, looking for the entities he knew must be nearby.

And they were. Two boys with dark hair and dark skin became visible right beside him. Their faces were contorted in rage, and one of them raised a hand to strike at Sam. Sam rolled forward, away from the water’s edge, ducking under the boy’s punch and yanking the rope with him. He ended sprawled on the upward sloping ground next to his now destroyed spell work. The rope ran under the first boy’s feet, momentarily tripping him. His twin, unencumbered, dashed in to grab Sam by the wrist. Sam held the rope tightly in one hand and grabbed, unseeing, at his duffel on the ground beside him. He felt it wrap around the hilt of Ruby’s demon blade, and swung the knife forward without thinking. He felt it connect with flesh, and the demigod snatched his hand away from Sam’s with a hiss, and thunder echoed the sound.

Sam took the moment of respite the boy’s confusion and pain gave him, using it to pull further on the rope, reeling in the man he hoped was still on the other end of it, while he scrambled to regain his footing. He didn’t particularly care about Wynt, he told himself, and it would make his life a lot less complicated if the guy just disappeared; it was just that there was no way he was going to let someone he had agreed to work with – hell, had compelled to work with him – die on his watch if he could help it.

 _Yeah. It’s not Wynt,_ per se. _And yet…_ He pulled harder.

He could hear the winds begin to die down in intensity as the twin demigods circled him, concentrating on the brother they had at hand, rather than the one in the water. Looking for an opening in the defenses of a human they’d not expected to have to fight outright, they separated, one coming toward his left side and one to his right.  

Sam continued to pull on the rope even as he backed up to put the steep quarry wall behind him. When the boys did make their move, it was with a hunter’s grace and inhuman speed. They were on him in a less than a second, one attempting to wrestle the knife out of his hand, the other to trip him on the sloping gravel ground. Sam spun and dodged, Ruby’s knife flashing, but the twins’ combined speed and strength made a real fight impossible.

Sam jammed his heel into the dirt, the rope momentarily forgotten, when the right-hand twin managed to get inside his reach, shoving him downward as his brother pulled Sam’s left ankle. Together they began yanking him back toward the water’s edge. He swung out again with Ruby’s knife, catching one twin on his cheek. That boy shrieked and lightening flashed across his eyes and across the clear blue sky. He grabbed Sam’s arm and wrested the knife away from him, flinging it to the ground.

And then there was an answering shriek and clap of thunder so loud Sam thought he’d gone deaf for a moment. The boys disappeared in a flash of light, and Sam looked up to see Dean Wynt standing above him. Wynt was soaking wet, his shirt torn and bloody on his left side. The rope hung from him still, but the man must have continued to swim to shore once Sam had become unable to pull it. In his right hand, Dean held the angel blade. Its silver length dripped with blood.

Sam nodded his unspoken thanks to Dean, who flopped down onto the ground beside him. They lay on the bank of the stinking green water and panted until Dean’s loudly chattering teeth drove them to leave.

 


	6. Where the Buffalo Rhome

**\- 6 Where the Buffalo Rhome -**

The climb back to the Impala took far longer than their descent had. Dean stumbled on the loose gravel, uncoordinated, his usual deadly grace stolen by steadily increasing shivers. The water had been icy cold, and the winter morning’s weak sun did little to dry his sodden clothes.

Without really thinking about it, Sam trailed closely behind Dean, not insisting the man lean on him but near enough to reach out with a steadying hand whenever Dean’s steps faltered too far. Dean appreciated both the assistance and the way Sam delivered it – not too close, never far away. Like Sam knew what he needed.

When they reached the car, Sam stepped in front of him to open Baby’s passenger side door, then hurried to the trunk to drop off their bags and retrieve his first aid kit and a familiar grey, woolen army blanket. Returning to Dean, he said, “Take off your shirt,” and Dean complied out of long habit rather than from any supernaturally-enforced command. It was time for the post-fight first aid, and Dean was on the examining table. It felt so normal. A lump formed in Dean’s throat as he shifted to sit sideways on Baby’s bench seat, his feet hanging out the door.

Sam crouched down to take a look. His fingers, firm but gentle, prodded the blossoming purple bruise which covered a large part of Dean’s left side. “Doesn’t feel like anything’s broken,” he said in a businesslike tone before he cracked open a bottle of water and cleared away mud and blood. Pink and grey tendrils of filthy liquid dripped downward onto Baby’s upholstery. Dean winced at that, but Sam didn’t seem to notice. “Most of this is just scrapes, but I think you’re going to need a couple of stitches here.” He pointed at a particularly angry gash just below Dean’s ribcage. Dean grunted in agreement. “For now, this should hold it.” Sam ensured the cut was clean and then pulled some sterile gauze from his kit and taped it in place. The basics taken care of, Sam waited for Dean to pull his legs inside the car and handed over the blanket. “Let’s get back where it’s warm and I’ll stitch you up. Unless you want a hospital?”

Dean quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Figured not.” Sam walked over to the driver’s side. Getting in, he took a sniff and wrinkled his nose. “You smell like a toilet.”

The familiar line startled a laugh from Dean. Sam found himself smiling in confused response as he pulled away from the quarry and started back toward the hotel.

oooOOOooo

Sam’s medical kit was rudimentary at best; far more similar to the odd assortment of items he and Dean had used in their twenties than to the well-stocked setup they’d become used to since they’d moved into the Men of Letters bunker. After becoming happily acquainted with medical-grade suturing material, Dean was less than thrilled when Sam pulled dental floss from his bag. However, the younger man’s hands were steady and sure as he applied the stitches along Dean’s lowest rib, and the process was completed with as little pain as could be expected. In fact, since the cut was encrusted with rusty flakes from the crappy metal boat and Chuck only knew what from the stinking lake, cleaning it out actually took longer and hurt far more than the sewing process. Four sutures closed the gash, and before Dean had worked up to asking Sam for a swallow or two of something to kill the pain, his brother was taping a gauze pad over the wound and handing him dry clothes. Dean tucked into the bathroom to clean up, emerging as he lifted his shirt gingerly over his shoulders.

He gave Sam a studying look. Sam was, again, looking at Dean’s family photographs.

“You owe me a question.”

Sam put the photos aside and returned the appraisal steadily. “Quid pro quo.”

“I think I’ve earned it,” Dean smirked, beginning to button the flannel over his chest, the left side of which was now a deep purple color, streaked with long shallow scrapes which only served to highlight the gauze.

Sam nodded. “Are you sure you’re ready for it?”

“I am.”

The implication was clear in his voice. _I am. Are you?_ But Sam ignored it. If Wynt was determined to push his brain toward the truth he needed to hear, Sam would accommodate the man.

“Shoot.”

Dean had been thinking about this since Sam’s abortive attempt to exorcise him the night before. He couldn’t ask about Ruby yet, mainly because he couldn’t think of a way to phrase, ‘Are you hopped up on demon blood and banging a dead woman’ without risking any hope of Sam continuing to work with him. That question would need to be asked and answered – would be asked and answered – if Dean couldn’t break this curse any time soon. For now, he didn’t need to confront Sam so much as get that oversized geek brain of his to work.

He needed a question that made Sam remember his family; one that matched Sam’s formidable mind with equally formidable emotional impact. He’d agonized over it for hours, but now the question came fluidly to his lips, the tone carefully practiced to be devoid of the anger and grief he’d experienced when he’d seen Sam using the powers he’d gained the day their mother had died. “Who killed Azazel?”

The change which came over Sam was sudden and complete. It was as if he’d slammed a door between them. A solid iron, heavily salted, panic room door. Sam’s body went rigid. His eyes flashed with a pain and burning hate that only hell could hold before flattening to cold, grey anger so quickly that Dean might have thought he’d imagined it, if he did not know Sam as well as he did.

Silence stretched. Ten seconds. Thirty. Dean began to think this man who was his brother had decided not to keep his word, until a still, low voice returned his question with a question. “Why do you think Azazel is dead?”

“You said you’d answer my question,” Dean replied, just as quietly, “not that I’d answer yours.”

“Well, I can’t answer yours. Because no one killed Azazel.” And that red hot pain and hatred returned to the man’s eyes. “Yet.”

oooOOOooo

The room had been uncomfortably silent after Dean’s abortive attempt to get Sam to talk to him about the yellow-eyed demon. Sam had left, ostensibly to pull together some gear for their next stop -- the area where hikers had been when they’d died of snakebites -- but obviously seeking some time to cool off. Dean took the time to consider what Sam’s answer (or lack of answer) had told him.

If no one had killed Azazel, it would explain Sam retaining his psychic abilities. Sam had told him that others of Azazel’s “children” had been able to expand their mind mojo, gaining more and stronger powers as they’d practiced them. Without that day at the hell gate when Dean had shot the yellow-eyed demon, Sam must have done just that. He could obviously manipulate Dean’s thoughts, requiring him to follow commands. That was a talent they’d seen before, in the twin psychic boys Ansel and Andy. Could Sam use other abilities they’d seen? Super strength? Telekinesis? He’d already been able to do that once when he thought Dean’s life was in danger. Without Dean to keep him human, how close was Sam to _inhuman_?

Another thought came unbidden and unwanted; if Azazel was alive, and Dean hadn’t saved Sam, and Sam was alive, had Sam won that battle Azazel had created? Had Sam been Azazel’s champion? In Sam’s new memories, had Sam opened the hell gate?

The door clicked open and Dean jumped.

Sam noticed, saying “Easy tiger,” and cocking an eyebrow in teasing amusement. “You feeling up to a walk in the woods?”

Dean cleared his throat, patted his side as if to indicate _this old thing? No problem!_ And responded, “Yeah.”

oooOOOooo

Close to two hours later, Dean was rethinking his assessment of his readiness for this part of the hunt. Traipsing around, over, and across trees, rocks, and the occasional creek swollen by the recent rains was not Dean’s idea of how one should spend the afternoon after one got sewn up with dental floss. Especially when the express purpose of the hike was to locate a nest of snakes known for their appetite for human flesh. And yet, here they were. He trudged along behind his gigantor brother, trying to ignore the ache of his bruised side and the sting of sweat and dirt wheedling its way into his wound.

Both men were soggy with sweat and the leftover rainwater which dripped off of every surface. Red-brown, clinging Texas clay mud layered their jeans and made their boots slip and slide. Sam led the way, now sliding slightly as the trail wound into a steep constricted downslope between two rocky outcroppings. He pushed through some overhanging bracken, shaking loose yet more cold drips onto Dean, who came grumbling right behind him.

A thin dangling branch swung back toward Dean, and he didn’t see it coming until it slapped his nose wetly. He swatted it out of the way as if it had insulted him. “What the hell was anybody doing all the way out here in the first place?” he asked, a hint of whine DEFINITELY NOT entering his voice.

“Don’t know.” Sam replied shortly. “None of the victims were the outdoorsy type, either. They must’ve…” his voice faded away and he stopped abruptly. Dean’s next step had him walking into the taller man’s back with a grunt.

“Freaking Sasquatch.” He moved to see what had made his brother stop.

“Wynt. Freeze.” Sam’s voice had that command edge to it again, but the supernatural compulsion was hardly necessary.

After a lifetime of hunting together, Dean recognized the urgent tone, the set of Sam’s shoulders.

Danger.

Unable to see anything useful over Sam’s bulk, Dean looked down. He saw the problem immediately. Curling around Sam’s right foot was a snake. It was about three feet long, striped with black, yellow, and red in bands around its body, and it was sinuously exploring Sam’s boot, reaching its head slowly up his ankle. As Dean watched, the snake was joined by another, this a broader, brown variety. The second snake’s tail was twitching to create a rasping rattling noise. Dean heard answering rattles from ahead on the trail.

“How many?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Dean moved slowly, stepping back and gaining purchase on a rock ledge beside him, then pulling himself upward to get a better look at the problem. His first glance over Sam’s shoulder told him why the younger man hadn’t wanted him moving forward. Sam stood at the mouth of the trail like a flannel-checked plug in a bottle. Just beyond him, the trail widened out and the ground flattened into a grassy bank backed by a swollen, muddy creek. Between the man and the water lay a writhing, squirming blanket of snakes in multiple colors and patterns. They undulated across the bank, carpeting it in numbers enough to seem like a multicolored liquid flowed over the grass and around tufted weeds. The snakes were moving in near unison toward the hunters who had entered their world.

“Cottonmouths and rattlers and copperheads, oh my!” Dean announced in a sing-song parody of the Wizard of Oz.

Sam turned his head enough that Dean could see the patented Sam Winchester bitchface aimed his way. “Thank you for your insight. I could use some ideas for getting out of here without…”

“…turning into Alpo Snake Chow?” Dean supplied.

The bitchface grew more pronounced as Sam added a clenched jaw and an impressive eye roll. “Yes. That.”

The first snake was slowly winding its way up Sam’s right leg, while the rattler continued to curl around his boot. A third and a fourth animal had joined them, and were beginning to explore the tall man’s left foot.

“Well,” responded Dean, “we could ask them.” He indicated the far bank, and Sam’s attention followed the gesture.

There, watching the proceedings, stood the twins. Their arms were crossed across bare chests in identical attitudes of satisfied anger.

Sam spoke out of the side of his mouth. “They don’t look like they’re in the mood for quid pro quo.”

“Can you back out?”

Sam looked doubtful. “Don’t think I have much choice.” The leading edge of the tide of snakes was nearing their entrance to the clearing, and another rattler had begun plying its thin tongue along the toe of Sam’s boot, scenting the invader.

“Man, I hate to ask this, but is there any chance you can whip up some telekinesis? Push the damned things away from you?”

“Won’t work,” Sam answered honestly. “I knew a guy who could have done that, but I’d just as likely pull these rock faces down on us by mistake.”

Snake number five slithered between Sam’s feet and wound toward Dean.

“OK, then plan C.”

“C?”

“At least.” Dean reached into the backpack Sam wore, withdrawing a can of bug spray and his lighter. “I go all firebug, you get rid of Sir Climby Pants and run.”

Sam looked down at the coral snake which was now attempting to explore his jeans pocket and then back at Dean as if he was crazy. “I get rid of Sir Climby Pants?”

“Unless you’re planning to keep him as a pet?”

“On three?”

“Yeah.”

“One, two,” Sam grabbed the coral snake behind its head and flung it away on “three!” and took off, jumping back up the trail.

Dean sent a stream of bug spray toward where Sam had been, lighting it on fire and turning it into a makeshift blowtorch. As the remaining snakes shied back from the flames, he jumped down from the rocks and scrambled up the trail after Sam. A few seconds later, he gained an open bit of ground beyond the outcroppings and rejoined Sam. “As a bit of advice,” he informed the younger man, laughing in relief, “don’t try that with bees. It just pisses ‘em off!” His laughter stopped when he got a good look at his brother.

Sam was standing a few steps away, his breath racing, staring at the webbing between his forefinger and thumb. Two red puncture wounds there oozed blood in a desultory way.

“Shit.”

Dean didn’t even pause to acknowledge his brother’s curse. He whipped a handkerchief from his pocket and grabbed Sam’s hand, wrapping and tying it tightly around his wrist without asking permission. “They get you anywhere else?”

“No. Just the one.”

“Okay. No problem. Let’s get you out of here.”

“No problem?”

“No problem. We’ve got this.”

oooOOOooo

They didn’t ‘have this.’ Both men knew Sam shouldn’t be walking -- exercise speeds the circulation of venom -- but they had little choice. Even had their cell phones been working out here in the middle of nowhere (which they weren’t), Dean knew they needed to get much further away from Handsome Boy and Strange Boy before they stopped to call 911. The last thing they needed was for the twins to find them again. And so they walked, Sam compulsively rubbing the fang wounds as if to ‘milk’ the venom out of his hand.

Ten minutes after their escape from Snake Valley, Sam began to weave and stumble along the path.

Dean was beside him in an instant, steadying him. “Hey,” he said gently, “I got ‘cha.”

The contact and the voice felt so familiar, so _right_ that Sam found himself leaning into the man, allowing him to guide Sam’s now unsteady steps.

Another ten minutes passed as Sam’s weight increasingly shifted to Dean’s shoulders. Dean had his phone out, eager for any blip of signal from the device, when Sam’s legs simply folded underneath him. Both men went down in a heap.

“SAM?”

The taller man grunted in response.

Dean looked at the puncture wounds on Sam’s hand. Red streaks stretched from them, up over his wrist and under the tourniquet which obviously hadn’t helped at all. Dean catalogued what he knew about coral snakes. Their bites weren’t particularly venomous when compared to some of the other residents of that copse, but Dean did remember one specific symptom; paralysis of the legs and hands. “Sam, I need you to move your feet for me,” he shouted, looking up at his brother’s drooping eyes.

“Can’t,” came the drowsy, mumbled reply.

“Shit.” They still had at least another half hour walk back to the Impala, and Dean’s phone remained resolutely dead. “Okay, buddy, Plan D.” And he sat Sam up against a tree while he gathered the sticks he’d need for a litter to drag his gargantuan brother out of the damned woods.

 

 


	7. Building Rhome in a Day

When he woke up in the small county hospital outside of Rhome, Sam felt as if his hand was on fire and his head was in a vise. The smell of oxygen being forced into his mouth and nose under a plastic mask was all too familiar, of course; but for just a moment as he woke, something else felt familiar too. Dean Wynt sat next to his bed on a molded plastic chair, his head tilted forward onto his chest which rose and fell in solid, exhausted sleep. And somehow that felt right to Sam as well.

He reached out to nudge the man. Dean’s head snapped up abruptly and he dragged his hand across his face even as he stood. “Hey.” He shook his head to clear it and glanced at the bedside clock. Just after 1 AM. This was officially three nights in a row without any reasonable sleep. “How you feeling?” he grunted.

“Good.” Sam lied smoothly, “I think I got lucky!” He ignored the hard, searching look Wynt gave him at that pronouncement and began to remove the IV in his right arm with a sore and shaky left hand.

“You remember what happened?”

“Yeah, uh, snakebite,” Sam said vaguely, glad he wouldn’t have to try to guess what hunter cover story the other man had fabricated for him when he signed himself out of this place. This one was easy to explain, even to civilians. “But he must not have bitten me too badly, because like I said…”

“You feel ‘good.’ Uh huh.” Dean wasn’t buying it at all. “Okay. I’ll tell the doctor and the nurses that you’re a big tough guy and you didn’t complain. But you leave the tubes in place.”

Sam paused in his efforts to remove the various wires and tubes from his chest and arms, and began to form a response to the effect that Wynt wasn’t his mother, his father, or his BROTHER and therefore had little say in this matter. Then he looked at Dean, taking in his tired, flushed features and the mud and scrapes that newly covered his hands and clothing, and said instead, “You’re one to talk. Have you had them take a look at you yet?” There it was again; Dean ducked his head, rubbing his hand across his spiky hair and down his neck. It was _almost_ something Sam remembered. “Yeah. Didn’t think so, tough guy.”

It was several minutes before Sam realized that there were pieces missing from his memory. His heart pounded alarmingly as he reviewed what he remembered, coming quickly to the wall which signaled unconsciousness. Unconsciousness that had hit way out in the middle of nowhere. No way had he gotten back here under his own power. Shit. No way he’d been able to force Wynt to carry him either. His eyes snapped up to Dean’s, expecting… he didn’t know what he was expecting. Gloating? Scheming? Requirements for another quid pro quo? But all he found was concern, as the man watched the heart rate on Sam’s monitor peak.

“Whoa. Sam,” Dean reached out, almost touching his shoulder. “You okay, man? I need to call the nurse?”

“No.” Sam’s response was immediate. “No. I’m fine. It’s…” he took a breath and controlled his breathing, slowing his heart. Then he sat up and looked Dean in the eye; the next part of what he had to say was uncomfortable. “You got me out of there. You didn’t have to. So…thanks.”

oooOOOooo

If he’d had to be bitten by any of the snakes in that valley, Sam decided, the coral snake was the best of the bad options. Symptoms are slow to start, and antivenin given quickly enough can keep the worst at bay. Unfortunately, convulsions and breathing problems can also show up out of the blue for up to 18 hours after a victim seems to have recovered, and victims had been known, rarely, to completely stop breathing the next day when their chest muscles just stopped working. Dean had finagled, cajoled, and at one point attempted to bribe Sam to stay in the hospital for at least those 18 hours, but Sam wasn’t in any mood for following good advice.

_Apparently, stubbornness is an instinct, not a learned memory._ Dean sighed, as they made their escape at half past three in the morning by the simple expedient of Sam commanding first Dean and then the doctor to let him go.

As they walked out, Dean finally had to ask. “Why the hell would you want to leave the hospital when you’re feeling like crap?”

“I don’t feel like crap. I feel fine.”

“No.” Dean stated plainly. “You feel like death warmed over, you’re having trouble breathing, the light’s hurting your eyes, and you can’t feel your right hand.”

Sam startled. “How did you…” Sam shook his head in disbelief. “You’re a very observant man, Dean Wynt.” Acknowledging his pain and exhaustion at last, Sam allowed himself to sag a bit until they reached the Impala, and then leaned against it. “Take me back to the hotel. I’ve got better medicine than they’ve got in this place.” He patted his pockets before he realized that Dean must have the keys – he had to have driven them here. Sam looked at the other man who pulled the key ring out with almost a sheepish expression.

Sam shook his head. “Get us home,” he instructed without bothering to attach any power to it at all and wedged himself into the passenger side.

Once Dean had seen Sam to his room in the hotel, Sam had summarily sent the older man back to his own, ostensibly to give himself time to rest from his injury. As Dean left, Sam was carefully and stiffly retrieving something from beneath his bed. Dean pretended not to see, but the crushing feeling in his chest had nothing to do with boats or bruises.

oooOOOooo

Sam pulled a backpack from under the bed and retrieved a flask he kept in case of real emergencies. He hated to dip into his limited supply, but his head was spinning and that numbness Dean had noted in his hand was spreading. And this stuff? This stuff was magic.

He took a deep draught and felt strength return to his injured body, radiating outward from his core to the tips of his fingers.

He carefully screwed the cap back on the container and returned it to its place under the bed. He’d have to ask his supplier for more soon, but she was always happy when he stopped by.

oooOOOooo

As the sun rose, Dean used his enforced time off to call several hunters he knew, attempting to gather any information they had about ‘Dean Wynt’ or about Sam as he was in whatever version of hell they were living in now. The short answer?

‘Wynt’ was a respected, solid, appropriately badass hunter known for his mastery of weapons, his luck (he’d say ‘skill’) with the ladies, and his ability to clear out either a vampire nest or a liquor cabinet on no notice.

Sam? Opinions varied. He was either an extremely effective and equally obsessive hunter with a particular talent for taking out demons or the literal antichrist. Apparently, in this version of reality, Gordon Walker’s theories about Sam had gained significantly more traction, possibly because his psychic crap hadn’t ended when Dean killed Azazel. No one Dean talked to _knew_ Sam was psychic (and whatever the hell else he was), but not _knowing_ didn’t mean everyone didn’t know.

No wonder Sam was so closed off.

“So get this.”

Dean jumped as his door opened and Sam entered without knocking, apparently hale and healthy. Dean bit his tongue, his chest tightening.

“Yeah…Yes.” Dean cleared his throat and his face. “What did you find?”

The younger man gritted his teeth before continuing in a strained voice, “I looked up twins in Native American mythology. Some version of this Handsome Boy and Strange Boy story shows up in about eight different plains tribe legends. The specifics of the myth vary from tribe to tribe, but they always feature a pair of magical twins whose mother was killed by a monster. The twins are always separated for some reason, and one is always kept by the tribe while the other is hidden in the wilderness somewhere, so that one boy grew up civilized and the other wild. In every version, the two are eventually reunited, avenge their mother's death, and go on to have monster-slaying adventures.” Sam looked up to check that Dean was with him.

Dean made a waving, ‘get on with it’ motion with his hand. Privately he was thinking, _and why did I think Sam was different? For better or worse, Sam will always be Sam._ “Yeah. So far you’re not throwing me any surprises here. That’s all on Garth’s list.”

“Yeah, well, how’s this for something new? In every version of the myth I could find, the older twin is a moral, upstanding citizen while the ‘wild’ twin is a trickster – trying to con their father, running off into the wilderness to commune with the animals, fiddling with the older brother’s brain” -- Dean noticed that Sam rushed right past this particular detail -- “but in every version, even the wild twin isn’t truly evil. The two brothers may have different personalities, but they’re both generally benevolent heroes. They’re the good guys. They hunt monsters. They _save_ people.”

Dean considered this. “Garth’s story had the twins killing the snakes that were trying to bite people. They weren’t egging the damn things on.”

“Right. And it didn’t say the twins were drowning people. It said people were drowning in the river and the twins killed the water spirit doing it.”

“But our Handsome Boy and Strange Boy aren’t exactly the heroes of this story.” Dean’s mind spun to catch up with what Sam had obviously realized. “They’re playing for the wrong side. So who’s managing the team?”

“Ready for a quid pro quo or not, I say we ask them.”

oooOOOooo

Romulus watched the brothers planning with growing irritation. He’d fully intended that the Winchesters team up – that was, after all, the whole reason he’d started this little game – but the last thing he wanted was for the hunters to team up against _him_.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of the Winchesters. _Of course not. He was a god after all. Gods are not afraid of humans._ He studiously ignored the small voice in his head which was whispering that these particular humans had met gods before, and that those gods often had not come out on the better half of the exchanges.

So it wasn’t that he was _afraid_ of the brothers. It was simply that, if the Winchesters couldn’t play this game properly, Romulus would have to move on to other amusements. They needed to see the good sense that they expend their energy against Handsome Boy and Strange Boy, rather than against Romulus. It was time for a bit more incentive.

Again, he spoke to Handsome Boy, who passed their orders to his brother.

oooOOOooo

The problem, of course, was the need to invite the twins to chat without a repeat of the scene at the quarry. Each of the hunters knew several ways to summon a supernatural entity (Sam was forced to admit that Wynt’s knowledge of such rituals came close to his own), but none of those methods was likely to result in a calm sit-down with Handsome Boy and Strange Boy. To ensure that they weren’t going to get drowned or chowed upon by snakes, they’d need a way to actually trap the twins.

Sam was surprised when Wynt informed him that he’d had occasion to trap some pretty powerful entities in his fabricated life. “We’ve never done a god, but we’ve done just about everything else.” Sam chose to ignore the ‘we’ -- Wynt had the memory, and they needed it right now -- and indicated Dean should continue. “I say, we just throw it all at ‘em, all at once. We set it up like layers, one inside the other. The spell on the inside, then circles of trapping spells, then circles of salt, holy oil, goofer dust…”

“Holy oil,” Sam interrupted. “What the hell is holy oil?”

“It’s for trapping angels, dude.”

Sam’s eyebrows raised in surprise as he assimilated that particular information. “You seem to know an awful lot of angel lore,” he stated flatly, glancing sideways toward the bed where Lucifer was calmly setting fire to a pillow. Dean didn’t seem to see the billowing black smoke, so Sam ignored it as well.

“I’ve got a friend,” Dean mumbled. “Knew more about angels than most. He taught me some things.”

“So you don’t usually work alone?”

Dean viciously suppressed his voice’s apparent desire to plead with his brother, opting instead for saying, “No. There’s three of us; two hunters and an angel. We call ourselves ‘Team Free Will.’ It’s kind of an inside joke.”

“Free Will. From an angel.” Sam appreciated the irony. “Cute. How do you end up hunting with an angel?”

Dean sighed. “Long story.” He turned so that Sam wouldn’t see the grief he knew must be in his eyes. “He’s, uh, he’s gone now.”

oooOOOooo

Two hours later, Dean looked around himself at the cavernous space they’d chosen to set up their trap. Idly, he allowed his brain to consider how many empty basements, abandoned warehouses, and half-collapsed barns he and Sam had coopted for this sort of thing over the years. This one was a fairly typical example. The warehouse had once stored half-built combines and other farm equipment, but all that was left now was a jumble of rusty machine parts in one corner of an echoing open space given over to cobwebs and debris.

They’d cleared several years’ worth of dust and leaves from the middle of the space, and each man was now in the process of studiously inking lures and trapping charms onto the concrete floor. Dean observed that Sam’s encyclopedic knowledge of the weird was basically intact, but seemed to include none of the symbols Castiel had taught them. However, as Dean laid the first of their ingredients -- salt -- in a large circle around the writing, Sam began to follow him. Along the salt line, as if using it as a writing template, Sam painted what were clearly words in Enochian text. Periodically, the younger man mumbled as if answering some unheard question before continuing on his writing assignment, once even looking up with annoyance at something Dean couldn’t see, grunting an answer, and crossing out a word before going on.

“Do you see him all the time?” Dean asked, his voice gentle.

Sam didn’t look up. His tone was equally quiet, though. “I told you not to talk to me as if you knew something about that.”

“I know.” Dean paused. “Do you?”

“See Lucifer?”

Dean waited, not wanting to anger Sam, not wanting his brother to shut him out again.

After at least a minute, Sam silently continued in his writing before he stood, pulling himself to his full height. He looked from Dean to the place where nothing was and back. “Yes. I do.” His eyes and posture dared Dean to accuse him of something, anything.

Dean finished the salt line and sat back on his haunches. “And you’re handling it?”

“Am I not supposed to?”

“I remember a time when you didn’t.” Dean said, honestly, with no malice in his voice. “I’m glad that’s not true now.”

Sam considered that, deciding at length to take it at face value. He knelt to continue his writing for another minute or so, completing the circle of text. When he’d finished, Dean picked up a sack of goofer dust and began another ring, outside of Sam’s phrases.

“What does it say?”

“Mostly, ‘Stay here you bastards.’” Sam’s mouth quirked up in a semi smile. “It’s not exactly church prayers. That’s not the kind of Enochian I know.”

Considering who’d taught him, Dean figured that made sense.

“Lucifer says my grammar sucks.”

And _that_ was an interesting phrase to say, wasn’t it. “You’re out of practice.”

“Guess so.” Sam was standing outside of the double ring, holding a clay jug of holy oil that Dean had supplied, but not moving to pour it yet. “How much do you remember? Of your world I mean?”

“Of my world?” Dean repeated. He looked up at his brother, catching the tall man’s eyes and holding them. “I remember everything. Every day, every hunt together. There are no gaps. In my world, you are my brother, and I was there for you the day Lucifer took you, and the day you took him back.”

Sam cleared his throat loudly and broke the eye contact, turning away to begin dribbling a line of holy oil in a ring around the rest. His back was still turned to Dean when he said, “Well, then it’s a good thing we’re going to fix this. If we’re lucky, you won’t remember any of it when we’re done.”

_Yeah. If we’re lucky, at least one of us will._ Dean didn’t reply.

 


	8. Rhings

Sam and Dean surveyed their work. In the middle of the open warehouse space were six concentric rings of anti-magical elements and spell work. Cat’s-eye shells formed the widest circle, at least thirty feet in diameter. Inside that were circles of rose ash, iron shavings, holy oil, goofer dust, and salt. Enochian phrases filled the spaces between each line. As Sam had told him that the phrases weren’t actually magical, holding power in their angelic language rather than their actual words, Dean had distracted himself from his worry about both Sam’s memory and the younger man’s invisible friend by helping him think of increasingly rude ways of saying ‘Stay in the damn circle’ as they’d worked their way across the floor. The phrases along the cat’s-eye shells were decidedly unsafe for work.

Inside the smallest ring were two different summoning charms -- the Latin summoning spell they’d used at the quarry and a second spell which Sam had found on a website devoted specifically to Plains Indian lore. They also held a revealing spell, likewise of Native American origin, with which the men would force the twins to talk to them, or at least to show them what they needed to know. Hell, Dean’d settle for a damned game of Pictionary if that would solve this case and give him back his brother.  

They decided that Dean would work the Latin spell, and Sam had the words to both Wichita incantations written on a scrap of paper in his hands. When neither of them had been completely sure how to pronounce the Wichita phrases necessary, Dean had called Garth for advice. They were both fairly certain that the resulting pronunciations combined the Native American language with a Texas drawl, but they would have to do.

After a moment to catch a breath and take in the results of their labor, Sam shrugged at his companion and saw the gesture returned. _Nothing left to do but try._ Each man went to one of the summoning spells, lit the candles and herbs as their spell required, and backed carefully outside of the rings. Dean lit the holy oil aflame as they withdrew, and each man began speaking.

They’d not gotten past their first phrases when blinding light crashed into the center of the circles, accompanied by a clap of thunder which left their ears ringing and shrieking, and a reverberating force like ten jackhammers hitting the concrete floor at once. Both boys were thrown bodily to the ground, their overwhelmed senses registering their bruising landing but not the sight of their flight or the sound of its abrupt end.

A second or an eternity later, Sam pried his eyes open with an unheard gasp. The room seemed dark after that bright and sudden light, streaked and bubbled with fireworks that danced in air even when he blinked his eyes. It was entirely soundless save for a ringing scream within his own head. He felt a warm trickle on the side of his neck and reached a hand to his right ear. A droplet of blood trailed down his finger to the now-blackened page which held the words to the Native American summoning spell.

Dean lay beside him unmoving, his hands still wrapped around the tools they’d chosen to use in their ‘negotiations’ with the demigod twins – angel blade in his left hand, a torch of ash wood and pitch in his right. The torch was beginning to gutter and dim as it lay on the cement.

Inside the circles at the rim of a crater of their own making, stood Handsome Boy and Strange Boy. Their faces were black with soot and contorted with anger. The twins paced the small, rubble-strewn area within the rings, their lips moving soundlessly as they spoke either to one another or, with angry gestures, toward the ceiling.

Strange Boy sneered at the modern hunters who lay on the ground beyond this trap. He was seething with anger, with jealous rage, with the fear of a cornered man. He growled another curse toward the sky, and Romulus grinned back at him with the expression of a boy frying ants under a magnifying glass. For good measure, Strange Boy threw an equally blasphemous epithet at his other captors, the humans who had constructed these rings of magic. The tall one -- ‘ _Sam,’_ he thought, ‘ _Such a silly name’_ \-- stared back at him. That brother’s ears dripped twin rivulets of blood onto his neck, but aside from that injury, he seemed merely singed by Strange Boy’s lightening-fueled entrance. Strange Boy shouted at Sam in a language he would not have understood even if he’d been able to hear it. The other human – Dean – had just begun to move, twitching and groaning slightly where he’d fallen. Good. The twins’ power hadn’t been completely contained within this ridiculous trap of paint and powders. He and his brother could complete their mission. They would drive these interlopers away from this place.

Whether the modern hunters left together or alone was no concern of his. His only orders were to make them disagree, to make them fight for Romulus’s pleasure and to confuse them enough that Romulus’s world would take hold. He had a different aim than the god did, however. He would make certain that the Winchesters were forced to leave Rhome. They would take Romulus with them, and would continue to amuse their capricious new master as Strange Boy and Handsome Boy had done for so many generations. Then, finally, Romulus would let him and his brother go and they could rest at last. 

First, though, they needed to get beyond these traps and magics. He reached out to grasp Handsome Boy’s arm, stilling his twin’s pacing, and explained his plan.

Sam saw the boys converse; watched their focus shift to himself and to Dean. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision so that he could begin the spell which would reveal the truth in this room. As he did so, the air around him began to vibrate and pulse, the concrete beneath him bucking and rolling with thunder Sam could feel but not hear. Sam shifted to gather his feet beneath him, but it felt as if he were attempting to stand on the rolling deck of a ship, and he found himself tossed to the ground once more.

When he looked up, his eyes met Strange Boy’s, who regarded the human with fury for a moment before the hunters from two different times began to speak as if in unison -- Sam reciting the spell which should reveal the boys’ puppet master, and Strange Boy casting some unknown magic toward his human captor. The spells crossed the space between them, silent to Sam’s ears but as powerful as the stares they gripped one another with.

As Strange Boy focused on Sam, Handsome Boy set his attention to Dean. He, too, chanted a spell.

Dean blinked his eyes open, fighting against the glare behind his eyelids as a whining hum began somewhere behind them. He shook his head in an ill-advised attempt to clear it, but the whine only increased and pain rose to join it. Dean dropped the torch and angel blade and grasped his skull in both hands as the intensifying pain tore through the space between his useless ears. Someone was trying to shred his brain. It was the only way he could explain the piercing, searing torture and the whining which had become a screaming shriek and erased all other sound.

The rolling ground tossed the Winchesters’ carefully constructed circles into turmoil, first mixing the powders and then slowly creating areas where no magical ingredients lay. Iron filings sparked as they met the burning ring of holy oil. The twins began to pace once again, looking for the openings, stepping purposefully through the chaos they were creating. Strange Boy’s focus didn’t stray from Sam, their eyes remaining locked as the demigod moved forward across where the salt had lain. Handsome Boy started toward Dean, his chanting targeting his chosen human prey. The pain in Dean’s head seared still higher and he screamed, the sound buried in thunder and heard only by Romulus.

The boys pushed across Sam’s first line of Enochian script, seeming to have to force their feet onward as if walking through clinging mud. Sparks shot back and forth, racing between each boy and the center of the trap circle. The boys ignored them.

The ring of black goofer dust didn’t seem to slow either boy at all, but the second, wider circle of script gave them pause. Each boy reached out to the other, riding the rippling floor with dancelike grace and seeming to give one another strength to leap across that line. They never stopped in their spellcasting even as they grimaced in apparent pain during the crossing.

And now Sam could almost hear what Strange Boy was saying, as the enraged demigod gathered his strength and determinately crossed the spitting, flaming ring of holy oil, his shoes and clothes beginning to smoke blackly and emitting an acrid, rancid smell. The boy was repeating a single word, “Su-eerit,” shouted over the sound of his brother’s thunder. His brother echoed him nearly exactly, “Kir-su-eerit,” and focused on Dean.

Dean shrieked again beside him, and Sam felt the man’s pain in his own head, through the link that connected Wynt’s mind to Sam’s and forced obedience. In the moment the boys pushed into the next circle of script, Sam’s carefully crafted ties of coercion snapped apart like a broken rubber band, rebounding into Sam’s head with sudden agony. 

He closed his eyes against the assault and was thrown to the floor once more, as his mind was thrown into memory.

oooOOOooo

_Sam was in his old college apartment. He was saying goodbye to Jess, maybe forever, and the look in her eyes was breaking his heart all over again. She was hurt and confused, but he couldn’t answer her questions. He couldn’t tell her why he had to leave. He knew she’d believe him, no matter how crazy the story was. She trusted him, and that too shamed him because he’d lied to her from the beginning. His shame didn’t matter, though. He couldn’t tell her about his other life. Instead, he’d let her go, let her be safe. Let her find someone else who could give her the life she deserved – the life he’d wanted to share with her until the dreams had come._

*** Sam blinked and the memory morphed***

_Sam was in his old college apartment. The smell of just-baked cookies filled the air. He’d returned from this hunt -- maybe his last ever -- tired but at last content with the choices he was making. Dean hadn’t said he’d forgiven Sam for leaving, but Dean wouldn’t. Sam’s brother wasn’t one who said that sort of thing out loud. Sam lay back on the bed, listening to the sound of Jess’s shower in the next room._

***Another blink, and another shift*** 

_The dreams had begun weeks ago and they repeated the same scene again and again. Maybe they were just dreams. Maybe Jess was safe. Maybe Sam’s father was wrong, but Sam wouldn’t take that chance. He wouldn’t let another woman die the way his mother had. His father thought the dreams were real. If they were real – if there was even a chance that Jess was in danger because of him – then Sam had to go home; he had to get as far from Jess as he could._  
  
And then there was the yellow-eyed man. He’d appeared in Sam’s dreams too, and he’d had a message. “Go back to Daddy, Sammy boy. I’ve got big plans for you. Go back to Daddy and I’ll let sweet Jessica live.”

***Blink***

_And Sam had. Hadn’t he? He’d gone back to hunt with his father. And Jessica had lived._

_So why did he remember drops of blood on his forehead?_

_The heat of the fire?_

_Her wide, terrified eyes?_

_Dean – his brother – Dean’s arms hauling him away from her flaming, beautiful face, screaming…_

oooOOOooo

Screaming. He was screaming, and Dean was screaming beside him.

The twins had moved forward again, closer to their human prey, to the toys that Romulus would focus his play upon only if they could escape him. Only if they could escape this searing, clinging trap.

Handsome Boy focused half his energy on maintaining the continuous thundering roiling of the ground, beating back the magic potions and toppling the Winchester brothers, keeping them off of their feet. The other half he focused upon the older boy. He repeated one word as a mantra and spell, “Kir-su-eerit.”

The pressure in Dean’s head increased again and he could no longer see the warehouse.

oooOOOooo

_Dean was in a forgotten, overgrown cemetery with the devil._

_He leaned hard against Baby. The Impala’s fender barely held him up, just keeping him from falling to the ground at Sam’s -- Lucifer’s -- feet. The archangel pummeled him again, and again. Dean’s face was awash with pain, one eye swollen completely shut, the other focused on Lucifer’s face, searching for his brother, praying for Sam to see him. For Sam to know he was there._

***Blink***

_…but he wasn’t. Was he? The day the world had almost ended, Dean Wynt had been far from Kansas, hunting a werewolf outside of Saco, Maine._

_He’d heard about Stull Cemetery and what had happened there, of course. Heard through the hunters’ grapevine the wild rumors of the Winchester brothers, Sam and Adam, fighting for dominance over the archangels who’d possessed them. He’d heard of their failure and their success; of their fall together into the pit that was hell._

***Blink***

_…but no. He was there. He had been there for his BROTHER._

oooOOOooo

Dean’s eyes snapped open and he shouted at Handsome Boy, daring him to try this trick on him. Defying him to attempt to dig his BROTHER from his mind. Dean couldn’t hear his own voice above the ringing which lingered in his ears and the continual thunder, but Handsome Boy must have heard it. Surprise momentarily flashed across the demigod’s angry expression.

And still the twins advanced across the multilayered trap. The rolling of the ground began to abate to trembling as they spent their strength forcing themselves through ring after ring, but it was enough that it had cleared the iron shavings completely away, revealing yet another line of Enochian writing. The twins howled their fury. Strange Boy called lightening in an attempt to blast a path through, but the words simply began to glow as if absorbing the electricity cast on it. The twins held one another tightly and flung themselves across the barrier together, and the light seemed to jump after them, scorching their feet and racing in twin bolts from them toward the center of the circles, bright sparks alighting in the crater they’d made there.

And still they chanted.

oooOOOooo

_When Gordon Walker had started talking, no one had listened. A crazy old man getting drunk at the Harvelle’s Roadhouse. Just another hunter too long in the job, seeing demons and monsters wherever he looked. And yet, the world was different lately. Demons and monsters DID seem to be wherever anybody looked. So Dean half listened to the old man’s ranting as he watched Jo Harvelle clean the bar with a towel._

_Jo didn’t like Gordon Walker. Neither did Ellen for that matter, but Ellen didn’t like anyone._

_When Gordon started raving about a boy named Winchester -- John Winchester’s older son, the one who’d been burned out of his house by a demon -- being psychic, maybe being a demon himself, Ellen all but threw the hunter out of the roadhouse. Dean shook his head in disbelief and returned to his whiskey and his flirting. But over by the pool table, someone else, Chris Campbell, echoed Walker’s words – quietly, so Ellen didn’t hear -- and Chris ought to know. He was kin to the Winchesters, after all._

oooOOOooo

Dean shook his head, shouting once more at Handsome Boy. “That’s not the way it happened!” but Handsome Boy sneered back at him and increased the pressure on Dean’s mind. Dean dropped face down, groaning and rolling on the heaving cement and held his roaring head as it seemed to try to rip free of his body.

Sam heard Dean shouting, saw him huddling in pain, and found himself shouting too, the words of the spell in his hand screamed as epithets, as weapons to wound rather than to free the demigods. Strange Boy shouted his spell as loudly, and Lucifer shouted with him. “Su-eerit! Su-eerit Sam! Su-eerit!”

oooOOOooo

_Lucifer had driven them to the office. The warehouse. It was an office, but Sam had driven. To the warehouse. Only he’d been with Dean. Had he? Sam couldn’t remember._

_But Lucifer had known how to make the pain end. Sam could stop being a burden to his brother. He could end the visions, the pain, and the confusion. Dean could stop worrying. Certainly Sam wouldn’t go back to hell if he died this time, would he? Or was Lucifer right? Had Sam never left? Was he still in hell?_

_And then Dean had been there. The real Dean. His Brother. And he hadn’t wanted Sam to die. He wanted Sam to live. To use Dean as his foundation. Dean didn’t feel burdened by Sam._

***Blink***

_Only, Dean wasn’t Sam’s brother. Was he? It was a myth built by those demigods. Chuck had saved him from Lucifer’s grasp that day. Chuck -- God -- had held Sam’s injured hand and given him the knowledge that Lucifer was still in his cage. Sam had put Lucifer back into his cage. Sam was free._

_Chuck had set Sam free. No, it wasn’t Chuck, was it? It was someone else. Castiel had set Sam free. Who was “Castiel”? Sam didn’t know anyone by that name._

_Lucifer was a vision, and Chuck had showed him the way to sanity._

_That was how it had happened, wasn’t it?_

oooOOOooo

No. It wasn’t.

Unconsciously, Sam grasped his left hand tightly in his right, feeling the pain in his grip, feeling the scar which still sliced across his palm.

Dean.

Memories -- real memories -- slammed into him, with almost physical force. His mind shifted and spun, as the ground shifted beneath him, and he nearly fell to his knees.

Dean Winchester was Sam’s brother. His stone number one. And he was in trouble, shouting and writhing in pain on the ground beside Sam.

Sam picked up Dean’s discarded angel blade and stood over his brother, protecting him as best he could as he braced himself against the still-rocking ground and read out the spell, shouting it toward the twins.

And they shouted back to him and to his brother.

oooOOOooo

_Dean rounded the corner to see the altar. Sam and that bitch demon Ruby stood over Lilith. He wasn’t too late. He could stop this. He’d convince Sam and they’d send Lilith back to hell and the 66 th seal would remain unbroken._

_And then Ruby turned to him. Her face said she knew she had won. She knew that she had taken his brother from him. The thick wooden doors slammed, locking Dean out of the chapel._

***

_But Sam Winchester was on Ruby’s side, wasn’t he? Sam was working for Azazel; working to set Lucifer free, just as Gordon Walker had said that day at Harvelle’s Roadhouse. Sam Winchester had become something just short of a demon himself, hadn’t he? And hadn’t it been Sam, not Ruby, who shut Dean out of that chapel so that he could set his master free?_

oooOOOooo

No. “NO!” Dean shouted, prying his eyes open against pain that nauseated him.

And then he saw it. As the twins crossed yet another line of their trap, crawling now but still moving forward, clawing their way toward Dean and his BROTHER, Dean saw what they’d come looking for.

Lying across the floor, only visible where it crossed each line of Enochian script, sparking and glowing and then disappearing without pattern, were lines of chain made of flame. They shifted and shook with the still-trembling ground, and lightening flew from them to the center of the crater. Chained by the ankles, still the twins advanced toward their prey, each with his own mantra, Strange Boy’s “Su-eerit” and Handsome Boy’s near echoing “Kir-su-eerit” and now Dean could understand them. Strange Boy’s “Remember” and Handsome Boy’s “Forget” sowing chaos in the minds of the humans they hunted.

“Sam!” Dean shouted, grasping his brother’s leg where Sam stood over him. “The chain!” He pointed wildly, pulling Sam’s attention to the flashing, half-visible restraints. “The CHAIN!”

Sam followed his brother’s frantic gestures, saw the light dancing down the ties which bound the twins. He pulled away from Dean’s grip, throwing himself toward their tormentors, diving to the ground beside them even as they realized he’d moved, and with all of his strength, Sam slammed the angel blade across the chains of fire. They snapped with a sound like breaking glass, and flames roared upward from the shattered links, licking the ceiling and forcing Sam to roll away and cover his eyes with his arms against the heat and light.

And then there was silence.

The still-burning holy oil crackled gently, the only sound as it lit the scene dimly. The demigods ceased their chanting and broke off their assault on the human brothers. They looked upward, twin smiles of malice stretching across their identical faces. They linked hands, and without seeming to notice the boys who lay on the ground before them any longer, Handsome Boy and Strange Boy soared upward. They faded to invisibility as they passed through the ceiling above.

And Romulus saw them.

And he fled.

And the world he had constructed to tear apart the Winchester brothers shattered as the chains had shattered.

 


	9. Dun Rhomin

The trip back to the hotel was made almost without speaking, with neither man yet able to put words to what they’d seen in the warehouse. Dean’s head was pounding and his eyes burning, his side throbbing and itching in turn. Sam and Dean were shaking with exhaustion, both mental and physical, their minds reeling as each man tried to make sense of two sets of memories now fighting for attention within each mind.

They entered the hotel through the lobby, ignoring the startled looks of the cute desk clerk and her surly colleague at their appearance, and took the elevator to the third floor. Dean began to lean drunkenly against Sam as they trudged the last hundred feet. Sam opened the door to his room and allowed Dean to collapse on one of the beds, ignoring the blood and dirt which covered the older man from head to muddy boots.

Dean groaned and Sam looked at his brother more closely. “Hey, man, are you okay?”

“No, I’m not freaking okay.” The ringing in Dean’s ears increased as he spoke. “Are you freaking okay?”

Sam winced. “Sorry.”

Sam’s tone was so tired, so defeated, so…Sam…that Dean cracked an eye open. His tone was caring now as he added, “I’m fine. Or anyway, I’ll be freaking fine. You don’t…” he couldn’t exactly just say, _you don’t remember me and that’s freaking not okay and it can’t be and they’re gone now so I can’t make them fix this..._ could he? He opted instead for, “You don’t need to take care of me. Seriously. You got chomped on by Strange Boy’s pet snake like twelve hours ago. I should be asking if you’re okay.”

And Sam…Sammy… knew what the real question was anyway. He smiled as he quietly replied, “I’m fine Dean. I remember.”  

Dean could have sworn at that moment that Strange Boy had zapped him with ten thousand volts. Without thinking, he sat bolt upright and turned to his brother. His head spun and his side protested viciously, but he needed to see Sam’s face, to confirm what he’d just heard. “You remember?”

Sammy cleared his throat, ducking his head to hide his eyes and turning away. “Yeah. I think they, um… Yeah. I remember. I mean, I remember them both. Both lives. All of them. Like, I lived twice. But I know which one was true, now.”

Dean’s eyes slid closed again for a moment in a silent prayer of thanks to whoever might still be around to listen. He released a breath that held the world in it. “God Sammy.” He slid back down onto the pillow. “Shit. Thank Chuck.” Then he tensed again as a new realization occurred. “I think I do too. Remember both lives.” His face twisted as if that realization left a sour taste in his mouth. “Or maybe, like, I saw one life on television? Like it was _almost_ real?” That didn’t make sense, so he dismissed the thought. He squinted up at his brother. “And Lucifer?”

Sam looked startled. How had he missed that? “He’s gone!” There was amazed laughter in his voice, and a wide, dimpled smile spread across his exhausted face. “He’s…” Sam thought about it, sifting through his now-layered memories. “He’s been gone a while, I think. Or maybe not.”

“Not long enough,” agreed Dean, the relief in seeing that smile encouraging one of his own, “but I don’t think I’m sorry your Enochian is better than it used to be.”

The moment of laughter was short-lived. Without warning, a crash of thunder shook the hotel, and a flash of lightning flared so close to their window that for a moment the entire room was blasted into shadowed relief. In the ringing quiet that followed, the Winchesters blinked and squinted their eyes in an attempt to clear the flaring lights that once again danced across their vision. As they regained sight, both men froze in place. Strange Boy and Handsome Boy stood where Lucifer had been that morning and frost slowly climbed the window glass behind them.

Lacking a weapon or (if he was being truly honest with himself) even the energy to wield one, Dean resorted to his old standby -- snark. “How.” He said to the Native American boys gravely, raising one hand in a Vulcan salute.

“How what?” returned Strange Boy, a questioning look on his face.

“How… how…” Dean shook his head. “Never mind.” He struggled to rise, but pain and dizziness forbid the motion. He settled for sitting on the bed as he faced the intruders. “What can we do for you gentlemen?”

The twins looked at one another. This was not how they’d expected this conversation to go. Strange Boy stepped forward. Sam moved to stand between him and the injured Dean. If the two were still intent on killing the Winchesters, the fight would be a bit one-sided given his current condition; but they sure as hell weren’t getting to his brother without going through him first.

“I mean no harm,” stated Strange Boy.

“Not that you don’t deserve it,” filled in his brother.

Strange Boy turned toward him and pulled such an amazingly accurate impression of Sam’s patented ‘knock it off, bro’ face that Dean stifled an inappropriate laugh. Sam heard the resulting snort and turned to him with a similar expression and Dean couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud, holding his side against the burning of his bruised ribs as he slid back to the mattress.

Sam sighed (which only served to drive Dean into further giggles) and turned back to their visitors.

“If you don’t mean harm, what do you mean?”

“My brother thinks we should tell you thanks,” replied Handsome Boy, still standing by the window with a grudging expression on his face. “I prefer to use the vernacular of your day and just tell you to Fuck Off.”

“Brother.” The tone of Strange Boy’s voice was clearly one of reprimand. “These men broke our chains. We owe them…” He paused, then turned to fully face Sam. “We owe you both a debt of thanks and an assurance. Romulus will not harm you further, and we will not harm this town. We want to rest now.”

“Romulus?” Sam asked.

Dean heard the curiosity in his brother’s voice. Damn. He just knew the kid was going to ask for -- and maybe freaking get -- a lecture on god-on-demigod action. Dean didn’t have the energy for that. “Yeah. That’s what he said. Now, thank you Misters Strange and Handsome, or you’re welcome, or whatever, but…” 

“Fuck off?” filled in Handsome Boy, now wearing a cheeky grin.

“Exactly.”

The demigods were gone in the blink of an eye.

Dean laughed again and the effort made him grimace. His hand went again to his injured side.

Sam saw the movement and stepped over to where his brother lay. “You rip your stiches?”

Dean grunted. “Dunno.”

“Yes, you do.” Sam sighed the long-suffering sound of a man who’d had to deal with Dean for decades. “Come on, tough guy. Let me see it.”

“You can’t order me around,” Dean smirked.

“You sure?” Sam grinned in response. “I still remember the whole other life. How do you know I won’t just tell you to strip?”

Dean’s eyebrows rose, and Sam responded with the mother of all bitchfaces. “You know what I mean.”

Though Dean half grunted a dismissive laugh at the poor joke, now that Sam had given voice to that wrinkle, Dean had to admit that the thought worried him. He complied with Sam’s instructions anyway, slowly removing his torn outer shirt and beginning to peel off the black t-shirt he wore underneath. It stubbornly stuck to dried blood and filth, pulling painfully.

“Dean. Hold on.” Without thinking, Sam sat beside him and carefully removed the shirt, feeling as he did so the heat which was beginning to rise from his brother’s skin. His lips tightened, and he took a closer look at his brother’s face, noticing for the first time that Dean was flushed beneath the layers of grime and soot. The older man saw concern play across his brother’s face, sighed, and allowed his brother to put a cool hand against his forehead. “Why didn’t you tell me you were getting sick?”

“Well, we were kind of busy at the time,” Dean replied, trying to laugh off his brother’s concern.

Sam was having none of it. “Yeah, we were busy, and it’s no excuse. You know that you not being in top form could have gotten both of us hurt.” He gestured to the damage now obvious on Dean’s torso. “You know better than this.”

Dean half-heartedly shrugged, allowing Sam to poke and biding his time before answering. He stubbornly refused to look at his side long enough to confirm what he already thought he knew. The damned cuts were infected. Not a big surprise considering the filthy swim he’d taken while they were fresh and new. “Sammy, you know I would have told _you,_ ” he explained somewhat awkwardly, “but I’d have been damned if I was gonna tell that other guy. And the other guy wouldn’t have cared anyway.”

Sam grimaced at that. “Point taken,” he said, sliding off the bed and reaching under it to pull the ‘Other Guy’s’ backpack out with one hand. “But, the other guy could have helped, you know.” Sam rummaged through the bag, and grinned widely as he found the flask he’d hoped would still be there. “Ha. Still can. I’ve got some stuff here which might help you feel better.”

Dean couldn’t help himself. He physically recoiled, leaning back from Sam’s offer even as his mind reached ten different conclusions about what Sam might have in that flask.

Sam saw him push back. That one moment of fear and disgust, which in one life he had become so entirely used to, strangely felt worse than the sum of distrust in all of those memories; far worse than the reactions from a hundred hunters in another world. He swallowed, guessing immediately where Dean’s reaction had come from. “Dean,” he opened the flask, holding it out to his brother to inspect. “It’s not… It’s not what you think. It’s from Missouri Mosely. Just a potion. It removes poison, like the snake venom or the infection you’ve obviously got from that stupid rusty boat.”

After another moment’s slight hesitation, Dean reached out to take the flask, sniffing it and wrinkling his nose at the bitter smell. Still, he didn’t drink. He needed to ask the question sometime. Not gonna enjoy it, but it had to be asked. He took a deep breath and looked Sam up and down before asking in an almost businesslike tone, “The other guy, was he using?”

Sam half smiled. Dean was Dean, in any life. “No. The other guy quit using the day he went to hell. Just like the guy in front of you did.”

Dean sighed in relief, his body slumping visibly as a weight he didn’t know he could bear lifted from him with that statement. He raised the flask to his lips, wrinkling his nose again at the taste as he felt pain recede from his side. He nodded, recorking the flask and handing it back to his brother. “Missouri does good potions. Tastes like shit, though.”

Sam laughed outright at that. “I think she does that intentionally. Stuff costs a fortune. I think she didn’t want the other guy to waste it.”

oooOOOooo

Sam re-stitched his brother’s side, and then Dean took the first shower, taking his time to enjoy the nearly unlimited hot water a nice hotel could provide. Sam moved Dean’s things into their now shared room before taking his own turn to ease aching muscles under the spray. When he emerged, patting his hair dry with a puffy white hotel towel, he found Dean standing by a small pile of things he’d pulled from the backpack. The ‘other guy’s’ things.

Dean saw him and held up a photo he’d been staring at. It showed Sam Winchester at maybe 15 or 16 years old, playing pool on the table at a mostly empty Harvelle’s Roadhouse. Leaning over the table to take her shot was Jo Harvelle. From the looks of it, she was barely in her teens. Both kids were grinning, completely at their ease.

Sam took the photo from Dean. “Ellen took it. It was Jo’s birthday. She was kicking my ass at eight ball. Like always.” He could remember the day clearly. He could remember every day of the other guy’s life clearly. Toward the end, that life had been lonely and cold, but before that? He turned away so that his brother wouldn’t see the moisture gathering in his eyes.

Dean wordlessly placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, taking the photo and carefully returning it to its place in the ‘other guy’s’ journal.

oooOOOooo

By dinnertime, the brothers were beginning to realize just how far the twins -- or more likely the god who had chained them -- had gone to convince Sam and Dean that they weren’t related. After Dean re-set his cell phone speed dials (Garth resumed his number 5 slot), he and Sam headed downstairs to clear Dean’s things out of the Charger. Exactly half of their weapons inventory (plus the rocket launcher) was stowed in the newer car, as was precisely half of their non-weapons gear. Conversation revealed that Strange Boy and Handsome Boy had divvied up their histories, too. Dean got the bunker, Bobby, Jody, and the girls; Sam remembered the Harvelles, their father, and Adam. Dean was a little pissed about Sam getting Baby, until Sam reminded him that the deal had also included Lucifer, and that seemed like a reasonable trade.

“And the psychic shit?”

Sam considered this, turning his attention inward for a long moment as he searched for an answer to Dean’s question. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. What does that mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean,” Sam searched for a way to explain. “I remember using it. I don’t know why I can’t -- why the real me can’t. But I can’t.” He looked directly into Dean’s eyes, radiating calm and assured acceptance of that -- _this_ \-- reality.

Behind those eyes, his mind firmed as he found what he’d been looking for. In the dark recesses of his mind was a door, locked tight. On it were words in bright red letters. He recognized the handwriting as Missouri Mosely’s. They said, “Keep Out” and they held back a monster. As he had for a decade, Sam checked the locks on that door, shoring up the defenses his brother had helped him build; and he resolutely walked away from it.

**Fin.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to you for sticking with me to the end of this adventure. I hope you enjoyed reading it at least half as much as I enjoyed writing it.  
> One more time, I must send the most heartfelt of THANK YOU’s to the most wonderful sounding board, editor, beta, and (though she’ll never admit it) co-creator, JaniceC678. This story would not have been anywhere near as good without her. Especially the ending.


End file.
